Hermione Says I Do
by OrliGolas-4eva
Summary: When Harry Potter asked Hermione Granger to help him get back into the 'Singles Scene' she figured he needed some advice about women. But Harry's suggestion that they share a few practice dates threw Hermione for a loop. Could she really date her best fri
1. Chapter 1

**Hermione Says I Do**

**Summary:** When Harry Potter asked Hermione Granger to help him get back into the 'singles scene,' she figured he needed some advice about women. But Harry's suggestion that they share a few practice dates threw Hermione for a loop. Could she really date her best friend?

The answer was a resounding yes! Harry was sexier-and a better kisser- than Hermione could have imagined. Suddenly, marriage-shy Hermione was considering saying "I do." But first she'd have to convince her reluctant would-be groom to do the same…

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognize though, does belong to me.

**

* * *

****Prologue:**

While they were known to friends & family as Hermione, Ginny and Luna, they called themselves _The Wedding Belles._

None of them was absolutely certain who had first suggested the nickname. However, they all agreed that the appellation had been inspired by the bridesmaid's gifts given to them by Lavender Brown the weekend before she married Ron Weasley.

The gifts were belle-shaped silver lockets on delicate silver chains.

"Oh, _wow_," Luna breathed when she opened the velvet-covered box that contained her present. She looked up at the bride-to-be, her pale blue eyes luminous with pleasure. A flush pinkened her blotched face. "This is great."

"It's beautiful," Genevia Weasley declared softly, lifting her locket with slender, impeccably manicured fingers. A willowy, blue-eyed red head of twenty one, she was one of the two women who'd spent six years sharing a common room at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with Lavender.

She was also living proof that looks could be very deceiving. Judging on appearances alone, few people would ever guess that such a coolly elegant young woman had spent a significant portion of her formative years in places where the only available running water was that found coursing between the banks of a river.

"Let's wear them for the wedding," Lavender's dorm-mate, Hermione Jane Granger, suggested with characteristic decisiveness. Where Ginny resembled a picture-book princess, she was the epitome of the all-English, no-artifice-necessary girl. Of average height, Hermione had an athletically slim figure. Her sable brown hair was thick and glossy; her creamy skin glowed with good health. She exuded an aura of energetic confidence.

Lavender's lips curved into a radiantly satisfied smile. "I was hoping you'd want to."

"These will look fantastic with our dresses," Luna commented, tracing the exquisitely engraved surface of her locket.

"Anything would look fantastic with those dresses, Luna," Hermione declared, her long-lashed brown eyes sparkling. "Unlike some brides I could name, Lavender has excellent taste."

"You're not going to start complaining about your second cousin's wedding again, are you?" Lavender grimaced. "It happened years ago!"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Hermione countered. "I still suffer from flashbacks about being one of Barbara Jeanine's bridesmaids. I think I've got some kind of postnuptial stress disorder. Or maybe a chronic of taffeta phobia."

Lavender and Ginny looked at each other and groaned.

"What was so awful about your second cousin's wedding, Hermione?" Luna wanted to know.

"Chartreuse," came the succinct response.

"Huh?"

"The bridesmaids' dresses were chartreuse," Ginny explained. Her uninflicted tone suggested she was repeating information she'd heard many, many times before.

Luna pulled a face. "Oh, disgusting."

"The dresses also had hoop skirts," Hermione noted.

"Oh, seriously disgusting."

"Don't forget the parasols," Lavender said.

"Or the picture hats," Ginny added.

"I looked like a bilious mushroom," Hermione gestured expressively. "It was a marriage made in heaven, with bridesmaids dresses straight from Hell."

"Heaven?" Lavender scoffed. "You said Barbara Jeanine and what's-his-name—Marvin? Melvin—got into a raging fight at the reception and wound up throwing chunks of wedding cake at each other! I thought they filed for divorce before the honeymoon even started."

"They did," Hermione conceded easily. "But I don't believe in letting facts get in the way of a clever turn of phrase."

"If that's the case, you should consider going into advertising," Ginny quipped. That little remark received a snort for an answer.

"Well, we don't have to worry about food fights or ugly dresses where Lavender's wedding is concerned," Luna asserted. "It's all planned out and it's going to be perfect."

"Lavender does seem remarkably calm," Hermione observed, cocking her head to one side. "I mean, most brides-to-be I've known spent their final weekends as single women popping tranquilizers, breaking up with their fiancés, or plotting to murder their mothers. Sometimes all three."

"My mother and I did have a minor disagreement before I came to meet you," Lavender admitted with a smile. "But aside from that, everything's fine. I've only got one real concern."

"That Ron won't show up at the church?" Hermione was teasing, of course. She had good reason to know that the chances of the groom in question leaving his bride-to-be standing at the alter were nil. After all, she was best friends with the gentleman and she was also the one that urged Ron to open up his feelings to Lavender sixth year. Once it was done, sparks flew. They became romantically involved and were inseparable after that. If ever two people were made for each other…

This wasn't to imply that matchmaking had been Hermione's objective when she egged Ron to tell Lavender his feelings. Yet within thirty seconds they were together after he spilled his heart out, hands touching and eyes meeting, it had been obvious that Lavender and Ron were bonded for life.

Of course, tumbling into love like the clichéd ton of bricks seemed to be standard operating procedure where the men she knew were concerned. According to her research on it, her father had proposed to his future wife in the middle of their first date. Seamus Finnigan, first time he laid eyes on his now wife of two years, vowed he would never look at another female again. And Hermione had watched her other best friend, Harry Potter—loose his heart to a girl that pretty much didn't want anything to do with him, on the first day he laid eyes on her.

"Bite your tongue, Hermione," Lavender retorted. While her tone was chiding, her serene expression indicated that she harbored no doubts about the strength of her husband-to-be's emotional commitment to her.

"I know," Ginny said, her sky-colored eyes dancing. "You're worried about what you're going to do with four food processors."

"Five," Luna corrected with a giggle. "There was another one delivered to Lavender's house yesterday afternoon. I heard her uncle Ralph tell her dad he should raffle off the extra ones to help pay for Lavender's reception."

"Aha!" Hermione fixed the prospective bride with a triumphant look. "You're worried that your uncle Ralph is going to do something embarrassing at the wedding!"

"Uncle Ralph always does something embarrassing at weddings," Lavender responded dryly. "At funerals, too. It's a family tradition."

"So what do you have to worry about?" Ginny questioned. She frowned considerably for a few moments then continued in a pseudo melodramatic whisper, "Could it be…the wedding night?"

"Oh, I'm all prepared for that," Lavender replied airily. She cast a conspirational wink at Luna. "Luna lent me the magazine she wrote an article in. I believe it's the Quibbler, correct?" Luna nodded.

"So? What does that have to do with anything?" Ginny asked.

"Oh nothing really, just that she wrote on a sex education and added in some…explicit pictures and _instructions_."

"Really?" Hermione looked intrigued. "Has Ron seen it?"

Lavender's mouth quirked provocatively. A wicked glint appeared in her crystal grey eyes. "Actually," she drawled, "I thought I'd let the facts of life-ahem-come as a surprise to him."

"Lavender!" Hermione and Ginny gasped.

"What?" The inquiry was the essence of innocence.

"Girls who plan to get married in virginal white aren't supposed to make dirty jokes," Hermione informed her primly.

"Who's joking?"

"Well, if that's the case," Ginny said, "You should at least give Ron a chance to skim the article to get ideas."

"I'd be glad to lend him my notes," Luna volunteered. While the blush on her cheeks hinted she was not completely comfortable with the bawdy banter going on around her, the impish light in her eyes indicated she was game to join in the fun. "I mean, I've got plenty of notes and pictures left over."

"Really?" Ginny asked, arching her well-groomed brows. She sounded sincerely impressed.

The color of Luna's face intensified. "Well, it's because the editors believed my story to be too…informative."

"Forget about lending your notes to Ron, Luna," Hermione said, starting to chuckle. "Give them to me!"

"Me too," Ginny concurred, joining in Hermione's humor. A split second later Luna was laughing, too. Within a matter of moments, all three prospective bridesmaids were helpless with hilarity.

"Ladies...please..." Lavender reproved, gesturing for decorum like an old-fashioned schoolmarm. "Settle down."

It took a while, but order was eventually restored.

"You..." Hermione paused to catch her breath. "You still haven't told us what you're worried about, Lavender."

The soon-to-be Mrs. Ronald Weasley looked blank for an instant, then the corners of her lips curled up. "Oh. That."

"Yes?" Ginny prompted.

Lavender's smile widened to embrace her three dearest friends.

"I'm worried about which one of you is going to catch the bouquet...and be the next bride."

* * *

A.N.- So how did you like? I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And to the people that were reading my other fic 'Until you Came' I'm really sorry for not updating. I haven't abandoned it, I just haven't had time to do anything with it. I just had an idea and it popped out of my head onto the computer, so I wrote this one. But believe me, I haven't forgotten about my other one. Please review and tell me how you liked this one though. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Hermione Says I Do**

**Summary**: When Harry Potter asked Hermione Granger to help him get back into the 'singles scene,' she figured he needed some advice about women. But Harry's suggestion that they share a few practice dates threw Hermione for a loop. Could she really date her best friend?

The answer was a resounding yes! Harry was sexier-and a better kisser- than Hermione could have imagined. Suddenly, marriage-shy Hermione was considering saying "I do." But first she'd have to convince her reluctant would-be groom to do the same…

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognize here does belong to me though.

**

* * *

Chapter One: **

"I'm still having trouble believing you saved that thing, Hermione," Harry Potter said, plunging a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa in front of him. "It's been nearly nine years since the wedding."

The 'thing' to which Harry was referring was Lavender Brown Weasley's wedding bouquet. He'd discovered it in Hermione's possession—pressed and carefully packed away—several hours ago while helping her settle into her new condominium in London's fashionable buck head area. He'd been teasing her about it ever since.

Teasing was one of the Hallmarks of Harry and Hermione's two-decade-old relationship. They'd shared schoolwork and secrets as preteens, and a unique bond of understanding through-out adolescence and into adulthood. Don't get her wrong about Ron, she cares for him greatly, but she feels more connected to Harry.

If Hermione had been given one silver sickle each time somebody had told her that she and Harry were 'Just like brother and sister,' she would have been able to retire as an extremely wealthy woman before reaching age thirty. Heck, receiving just a Knut per repetition would have allowed her to build up quite a respectable nest egg!

She'd never liked the sibling analogy. It was such a cliché. More than that, it failed to reflect the fundamental truth about her ties to Harry.

Brothers and sisters were supposed to be close. It was more or less written into their genetic contracts. She and Harry had chosen to bond with each other. Theirs was a purely voluntary alliance that, despite a blood oath of mutual fidelity sworn at age thirteen, was subject to unilateral abrogation at any time.

When asked how she'd describe her relationship with Harry—and his with her—Hermione usually replied that the two of them were best friends. People unwise enough to suggest that there might be something sexual percolating beneath the apparently platonic surface of their friendship provoked either hoots of laughter or offended glares, depending on her mood.

This wasn't to suggest that what went on between Hermione Jane Granger and Harry James Potter was all sweetness and light. Heck, no. They'd been trading verbal jabs from the time they started school together. More with Ronald Weasley, but who's asking?

Put it this way: Hermione was absolutely certain that if she ever telephoned Harry in the middle of the night from equatorial Guinea and said she needed him, he'd come rushing to her aid on the first available chance—no questions asked.

What's more, she was equally positive that she'd respond in the same unreserved fashion should she ever call her for help.

"I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this," Hermione complained, selecting a tortilla chip and skimming it across the surface of the salsa. Both she and Harry loved spicy, Mexican food. The Mexican restaurant in which they were sitting was one they'd patronized together many, many times in the muggle world. "I caught the bouquet at Lavender's wedding and I kept it. So what?"

"I don't remember you actually catching the bouquet," Harry drawled, picking up the long-necked bottle of ale at his elbow and taking a healthy-swig. He surveyed her with amused green eyes. "It seems to me the bouquet bounced off somebody's head and fell into your hands by default. You didn't look very pleased when it did, either. In fact, I think there was a second or two when you seriously considered dropping the thing."

Hermione crunched down on the salsa-coated tortilla chip. In point of fact, Harry's recollection was right on the money. She'd definitely experienced a moment of dismay when she'd realized that, despite some determined maneuvering to avoid doing so, she'd somehow ended up clutching Lavender's bridal bouquet.

There'd been plenty of female guests who'd tried to catch the ribbon-trusted bundle of flowers, of course. Had there been an inconspicuous way of handing the bouquet off to one of those want-to-be-wedded types, Hermione would have opted for it. But there hadn't been. So she'd been forced to smile and laugh and graciously respond to a lot of prying questions about her matrimonial aspects.

The one thing nobody had asked her nine years ago was, "Do you want to get married?"

Her answer—had someone put the query to her—would have been succinct.

"No," she would have stated. "I don't."

If pressed, Hermione would have gone on to explain that although she had nothing against marriage, it wasn't high on her list of priorities. She craved a challenging career and the opportunity to establish herself as an independent woman. When she imagined the sweet smell of personal success, it didn't include the delicate odor of orange blossoms.

Her feelings about getting married hadn't changed much in the nine years since Lavender and Ron's wedding. She'd thought they might when she'd reached thirty. This expectation had been the result of watching a significant number of her contemporaries go into husband-hunting frenzies after they'd passed the big 3-0 unwed.

While the spousal search had paid off for some, it seemed to Hermione that most of her single friends were still frantically seeking Mr. Right. There were even a few so desperate to do a nuptial deed that they were ready to settle for Mr. Not Too Obviously Wrong…or worse.

"Don't you want to get married, Hermione?" an unattached acquaintance had recently demanded of her. The context of the question had been a discussion—a one sided litany of complaints, really—about the lack of eligible men in London and the abundance of competition for them.

"Not particularly," she'd answered frankly. "Although I'm certainly not ruling it out. If I meet someone wonderful and we fall madly in love with each other, I'll probably want to get married. But I'm not really looking. I like the life I have. The life I've made for me. Being on my own is--"

The sound of her name summoned Hermione back to the present. She looked across the table at Harry, wondering how long she'd been caught up in her thoughts.

"Have a nice trip?" He inquired wryly.

"Sorry," she apologized, reaching for the glass of unsweetened ice tea she'd ordered when they'd sat down. She sipped at it, trying to recall what they'd been discussing before she'd gotten so enmeshed in her marital musings. "I, uh, what…?"

"We were talking about you keeping Lavender's bridal bouquet."

"Oh." Hermione set down the glass and shifted in her seat. "Right."

"It's not like you to be so sentimental," Harry asserted, then paused for a few moments. When he resumed speaking, his tone was tender. "Now if it had been Cho who'd caught Lavender's bouquet…"

Hermione's breath wedged at the top of her throat as the half-whispered words gave way to an emotionally charged silence. She watched, hands clenched, heart hammering, as Harry retreated into himself—into a world of memories she knew she'd never share.

_Cho_, she thought. _It's always going to be Cho_.

'Cho' was Cho Liya Chang.

Cho…

The girl in school with whom Harry James Potter had fallen head over heels in love nearly a decade and a half ago.

Cho…

The young woman Harry James Potter had married in a joyous June ceremony some nine years later.

Cho…

The adored wife Harry James Potter had laid to rest on a bleak February afternoon a few months shy of his fifth wedding anniversary.

Hermione had been with Harry at the beginning and the end…and afterward. Monitoring his well-being had been one of her chief concerns since Cho's tragic passing, fifteen months ago. She'd done everything she could to help him piece his shattered existence back together.

She'd held him while he'd wept for his lost love.

She'd soothed him while he'd raged against the unfairness of life.

She'd spent hours—aching, seemingly endless hours—listening while he recalled the soaring happiness that had been his.

The first year after Cho's death had been hard on Harry. So hard that there'd been a few desperate days when Hermione had genuinely been afraid that he might surrender to his grief and do something irreparable.

Thankfully, those desperate days—and heartsick fears they'd endangered—had passed. Anger had eased. Sorrow yielded to resignation, if not acceptance. In recent weeks Hermione had begun to believe that Harry had finally come to terms with what had happened and had started to heal.

Or had he? She wondered uneasily, studying the lankly built man sitting across the table from her. If the look on Harry's face was any indication—

"It's chow time."

The ebullient announcement jolted Hermione out of her anxiety-tinged reverie. Its source was a pony-tailed young waiter named Scotty. The possessor of an eager-beaver grin, a body-builder's physique, and an apparently inexhaustible store of enthusiasm for his job, he'd served Hermione and Harry during many of their previous visits to the Rio Bravo restaurant.

"For the lady, the usual fajitas con pollo," Scotty said, plunking a sizzling platter of chicken chunks, onion strips and sliced green peppers in front of Hermione. "Hold the guacamole, double the side order of pico de gallo. Watch the plate, it's really hot."

"Thanks," she managed, still a bit off-balance.

"You're welcome," came the cheerful response. "And for the gentleman—what else but tacos al carbon. Heavy on the onions, forget the sour cream."

"It looks great, Scotty," Harry said, surveying the feast being placed before him. The introspective expression that had troubled Hermione was gone. He looked as though the weightiest matter on his mind was how to fill his mouth as quickly as possible.

"We aim to please," the waiter answered. "Although it's not very difficult with you two." He tilted his head to one side. "Look, I realize it's none of my business-but do you ever eat anything besides chicken fajitas and beef tacos?"

"Oh, sure," Harry said easily, flashing a quirky, crook-cornered smile. "Whenever we go out for Chinese, I get shrimp fried rice and she gets Moo Goo Gai Pan."

"Sometimes we split an order of stir-fried green beans with garlic," Hermione noted.

"In other words, you know what you like and you stick to it."

"At least as far as food goes," Harry qualified.

Scotty considered this for a few seconds, and then glanced back and forth between Harry and Hermione. "Anything else?" he asked helpfully. "Another ale, perhaps? Or a refill on the ice tea?"

"I'm fine for now," Harry said, picking up his fork.

"Me, too," Hermione concurred.

"Okay. I'll check back with you later. Enjoy your meal."

"We always do," Harry replied.

Scotty grinned in response, then pivoted on one heel and bustled away, his ponytail bobbing against his bulked up neck.

Harry dug into his entrée almost immediately. Ignoring the tantalizing aroma of her own main course, Hermione studied him as he ate. While his show of appetite was reassuring, her mind kept flashing back to the expression she'd seen on his face when he'd uttered Cho's name.

He'd seemed much more at peace with himself lately, she reminded herself. And today, when he helped her unpack at her new home, she'd felt as though the "old" Harry had been restored to her. The old Harry, who'd never been touched by true love or untimely death-who'd laughed easily, shared unstintingly, and embraced each new day as having the potential to be better than the one before it.

Finding Lavender's bridal bouquet hadn't appeared to have had an adverse effect on his mood. In fact, if she'd been asked to compare their reactions to the discovery, Hermione would have said that she'd been more unsettled by the discovery than he.

She chalked her response up to a certain degree of…well, embarrassment wasn't precisely the word, but it was in the neighborhood. Allocating the silver wedding belle locket she'd received from Lavender a place of honor in her jewelry box was one thing. Treating a dried-out bunch of ribbon-tied rosebuds as though it were some sort of treasured artifact was entirely another.

Harry had been right when he'd said it wasn't "like" her to be sentimental. Except for an abiding romantic fantasy that involved with Gilderoy Lockhart, mushy-minded emotionalism had never been her style.

It wasn't a matter of being insensitive. At least, Hermione didn't think it was. She had feelings. Intense, deeply held feelings. And she cared-passionately-about her family and friends. Nonetheless, if there was a gene for going gooey over raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, it obviously had been left out of her DNA.

Cho Chang, on the other hand, had sighed about the beauty of sunrises, sunsets and starry nights. She'd sobbed during weddings, baby showers and certain television commercials. She'd also been a total sucker for holidays, happy endings and the music of Barry Manilow (A muggle pop artist).

It had taken Hermione a long time to accept that Cho's lace-trimmed, hearts-and-flowers attitude was genuine. It had taken her even longer to understand that the attitude was one of the things Harry-her reasonable, rational best friend Harry- loved most about the woman he'd made his wife.

Hermione bit her lower lip and continued to scrutinize Harry. Maybe she'd been wrong, she worried. Maybe his teasing her about Lavender's bouquet had been a smokescreen for his true feelings. Maybe he was suffering inside, haunted by memories of his own wedding. Maybe the fragile, faded flowers had made him think of the baskets of blossoms that had filled Cho's hospital room during the awful days near the end of her—

"I'm okay," Harry interrupted quietly.

Hermione stiffened. "What?"

"I'm okay," he repeated in the same even tone, setting down his fork on the edge of his plate. "You can stop looking at me like you're afraid I'm going to freak out."

Aghast, she tried to reject his words. "I-I w-wasn't--"

"Hermione."

That's all he said. Just "Hermione." But those four precisely uttered syllables—plus the directness of his gaze—were more than enough to silence her stammered denial.

Hermione sustained Harry's steady, green start for a space of few heartbeats. Then she looked away. "I'm sorry," she muttered, not entirely certain for what she was apologizing.

"Don't be."

Easy for him to advise, impossible for her to comply.

Hermione made an awkward gesture, torn between the need to explain herself and the conviction that doing so would only make things worse. The former finally won out.

"Look, Harry," she began. "I don't want you to think that—I mean, I wasn't really…Well, yes. I guess I was. But I'm not…not--" She struggled for several seconds, and then blurted in a rush, "It's just that I get concerned about you, you know?"

"Of course I know."

The reply was quick and unequivocal. Yet for all its undeniable swiftness and seeming simplicity, something about it triggered an odd jolt of emotion deep within Hermione. It also drew her gaze back to Harry's face.

"I…I don't…understand…" she faltered.

Harry leaned forward. "Your 'Getting concerned' got me through hell, Hermione," he told her. "If you hadn't been there for me after Cho died, I might not be here now."

Hermione's throat tightened. This was the first time she'd heard Harry indicate that he realized how dangerously close to the emotional edge he'd come in the wake of his wife's passing. It was also the first time she'd heard him acknowledge her role in bringing him back from the brink.

"We're friends, Harry," she said, hoping her inflection communicated how much the word meant to her. "Friends help friends when friends need it."

"Yes," Harry agreed, nodding. A comma-shaped lock of jet black hair fell forward onto his forehead, right over his scar. He forced it back into place with an unthinking sweep of his right hand. "But it's important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change."

Hermione hesitated, sensing that they were entering into uncharted emotional territory. Uncharted for her, at least. There was an expression in her best friend's eyes—a tempered, disconcertingly tough expression—that suggested he'd been exploring this ground for some time.

"What are you trying to tell me?" she finally asked.

"I'm trying to tell you that I'm all right," he answered. "Not one hundred percent, but I'm working on it. Yes, I have moments when I miss Cho it hurts. And I think about her. I think about her a lot. But I don't obsess the way we both know I did right after she died."

"So?" Hermione could barely get the word out.

Harry remained silent for several seconds, the look in his eyes softening. "So," he finally replied, "It's time for you to stop 'Getting concerned' about my mental stability whenever I mention my dead wife's name."

As gentle as the implied reproach was, it still hurt. Hermione's first instinct was to dispute it. She opened her mouth to do just, but closed it without uttering a sound.

What are you going to say? She challenged. That you're a better judge of Harry's state of mind than he is? Are you going to suggest he's some sort of basket case? Just a little while ago you were thinking how much better he seems!

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to her.

What if she didn't really want Harry to recover from his grief? What if, in some dark corner of her soul, she was relishing his dependence on her? What if—

No, she decided. _No!_ It couldn't be. It absolutely, positively, _could not_ be. She knew herself better than that. And she knew her feelings for Harry better than that, too.

Hermione took a deep breath and looked the man sitting across from her squarely in the eye. "You're saying I overreacted when you started to talk about what Cho would have done if she'd been the one to catch Lavender's bouquet."

"I'm saying, you've saved me from myself more times than I can count since Cho died," he corrected without missing a beat. "But the kind of help you gave me during the past fifteen months—the kind that involved you being part nursemaid, part psychotherapist and all-round guardian angel—isn't the kind I need now."

Hermione let several seconds slip by, watching Harry's face intently. "What kind _do_ you need?" she finally asked.

Harry smiled. Grinned almost. The expression was shatteringly familiar to Hermione. It was a passport back to carefree past she'd thought was beyond reclaiming.

"I need you to be my best friend again," he responded with disarming candor. "And to help me get a social life."

* * *

**A.N. - **I just want to give some thanks to my reviewers and to also announce that I won't be able to update until another few weeks after this one. Sorry guys. 

**Icygaze52-** I'm really glad you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoy this chapter as well.

**Silver Rain Drops- **I know, Lavender and Ron, they just seemed like a cute couple to start this whole story off that I couldn't resist. And about Draco, you'll have to wait and see. Hahaha!

**The Gryffindor Drummer-** Well here it is!

**Goddess of the heart- **I'm glad you liked it!

**Miss. Radcliffe-** Well, I'm very glad you're taking that into consideration. I better do a good job on this story then, huh?

**Softball cutie-** Well, I'm sorry that my story didn't appeal to you as I would have liked it to, but I can't please everyone, now can I?

**Paws.on.scroll-** Hahaha, I totally agree with you, I know firsthand because that's what happened with me and my cousins at my sister's bridal shower.

**missradcliffe- **Oh no, it's not. Believe me. I'm not very fond of those fics myself. But I apologize if I made it seem that way. It was not my intention. But thank you for your review.

**Sarah-** Oh yes, I remember you, lol. I really do apologize but as I said, I haven't abandoned it, it's just I don't have time to go back to it just this moment. But I promise that I will when the chance reveals itself. And no, I won't do the same to this one.

**Harry-and-Hermione-4ever16-** Thanks so much. Glad you think so!

**A.A.N.- **Also, I would highly appreciate your guys' and girls' reviews. It's what inspires me to go on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hermione Says I Do**

**Summary**: When Harry Potter asked Hermione Granger to help him get back into the 'singles scene,' she figured he needed some advice about women. But Harry's suggestion that they share a few practice dates threw Hermione for a loop. Could she really date her best friend?

The answer was a resounding yes! Harry was sexier-and a better kisser- than Hermione could have imagined. Suddenly, marriage-shy Hermione was considering saying "I do." But first she'd have to convince her reluctant would-be groom to do the same…

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognize here does belong to me though.

**

* * *

Chapter Two:**

It took Hermione most of the rest of the meal to determine precisely what Harry meant by this.

"You want me to fix you up with someone?" she asked, rolling up her final fajita.

Harry paused in the act of forking up the last few grains of tomato-tinged rice that had came with his entrée. He seemed genuinely startled by her question. Then, astonishingly, he began to laugh. There was a definite edge to the sound.

"Fix me up?" he echoed after a few seconds. "God, no! The last thing I need is anybody else trying to 'fix me up.'"

"Anybody…else?"

"I'm up to my ears in people who want to introduce me to 'nice' girls."

"Who?" The question popped out, unbidden and unconsidered.

"I don't know."

"How can you not know who wants--"

"No, Hermione," Harry cut in, shaking his head. "It's the prospective dates who are the strangers to me."

"Oh." She paused, mulling this over, "But the people who want to introduce you--"

"_Them_ I know."

Hermione reached for her glass of now lukewarm ice tea and took a sip. "Do, uh, _I_, uh, know any of them?"

"Oh, definitely." The response was wryly ironic. "The list includes Mrs. Weasley, Cho's mother, Cho's older sister, my best friend's wife--"

"Lavender?" Hermione replaced her glass with a thunk. She'd spoke with Lavender about Harry over lunch just two days ago. Her friend had been sympathetic and full of advice. Yet not once had she mentioned that she was attempting to play matchmaker for her husband's best friend. She hadn't even hinted at it.

"None other," Harry affirmed, picking up his ale bottle and draining it.

"I see." And maybe she did, Hermione thought. Then again, maybe she didn't. One thing seemed plain enough, though. While she'd been 'Getting concerned' about Harry's emotional state, other people had been judging him sufficiently recovered from Cho's death to allow them to start pitching potential replacements at him.

_Friends help friends when friends need it_, she'd told her best friend earlier.

_Yes_, he agreed. _But it's important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change._

Hermione drew in a steadying breath.

"Okay," she began evenly. "You say you need me to be your best friend again and help you get a social life. But you _also_ say you don't need me to fix you up with anyone because you've got eligible women coming out of your ears. Exactly what is it that you want me to do, Harry?"

"I want you to clue me in about being single."

"Huh?"

"You know the scene, Hermione," Harry explained earnestly. 'You're a veteran of the battle between the sexes. You've been going out with guys for years."

'Not _that_ many," she retorted, stung by what he seemed to be implying. "I'm only thirty-one!"

"But you _have_ been around the block a few times," he persisted. "You've got some mileage on you."

Was Harry _trying_ to be insulting? Hermione wondered. She could live with him describing her as a 'veteran' of the dating wars. She'd used the phrase herself once or twice, joking that she had the scars to prove her claim. But when he resorted to automotive analogies…

"I don't know what kind of social life you think I've been leading, Harry," she observed stiffly. "But I haven't been cruising the highways or racing in the Grand Prix!"

"You haven't been sitting in the garage, either," he countered. "I have."

Although comprehension didn't dawn at this point, it definitely began nibbling away at the edges of Hermione's confusion.  
"Oh," she murmured after a moment or two, studying Harry very carefully. His cheeks were slightly flushed and he suddenly seemed to be having trouble meeting her eyes. Yet the squared set of his shoulders signaled determination. So did the stubborn set of his jaw. "Harry, look--"

He preempted her with a rush of words.

"You and I both know I wasn't Mr. Suave and Studly before I met Cho," he said flatly. "I was a short, hormonally challenged wizard in school. Even after the testosterone finally kicked in the summer before fourth year, I didn't pick up any action. Eight inches of height and a crop of acne, yeah. But action? No way. I hit fifth year without ever having had a one-on-one date. The only girl I'd ever kissed was you. I didn't have a clue--"

"Wait a minute," Hermione interrupted. Although she thought Harry's assessment of his adolescent self was unduly harsh, she was willing to let it pass. Not so, the claim he'd made regarding her. "You never kissed me!"

Harry clenched his right hand and thumped it against his chest, feigning a stab to the heart. "I'm wounded," he declared with a comic groan. "I can't believe you've forgotten playing spin the bottle at Grimmauld place, Christmas break our fifth year."

Hermione frowned, trying to remember. After a few seconds of concentrated effort, she began to recall the event under discussion. All things considered, she would have preferred not to.

"That wasn't a kiss, Harry," she stated.

"Oh, really? What would you call it?"

"A head-on collision with teeth. You nearly broke my nose!"

"And you split my top lip with your teeth," he riposted. "But don't worry, I've forgiven you. I've also acquired a little finesse since that episode. At least…" Harry paused, a smile ghosting the corners of his mouth. "I never had any complaints from Cho."

An odd, edgy emotion stirred within Hermione. Not envy, exactly, but unnervingly close to it.  
"She was a happy woman," she said quietly, meaning it. "And it was because of you."

There was a pause.

"You didn't like Cho at first, did you?" Harry said after a few moments.

Hermione blinked, taken aback by the assessment. "I didn't _dislike_ her," she responded, grappling with feelings that were nearly a decade and a half old. "Cho just seemed…different…from me. She was so feminine, you know? So _girly_. She was perky and pretty and she looked like she perspired cologne. Assuming she perspired at all, of course. I, on the other hand, was a flat-chested tomboy who sweated like a horse. She made me feel—oh, I don't know exactly. Self-conscious, I guess. And then there was the way she affected you. I mean, you took one look at her and all of a sudden you were walking around like a character in the Tale of the Body--"

She stopped abruptly, fearing she might have gone too far. "No offense meant, Harry," she tacked on awkwardly.

"None taken."

"You don't mind me, er--"

"Joking about my relationship with Cho?"

Hermione nodded warily.

"Not at all." The answer sounded sincere. "I know how careful you've been the past fifteen months, Hermione. But you don't have to tiptoe around my sensibilities anymore. As special as what Cho and I had together was, the memory of it doesn't have to be treated like a holy relic." Harry paused, then started to chuckle. "The Tale of the Body Thief, huh?"

She smiled. "You're reaction _was_ pretty radical."

Harry smiled back at her. "Yea, well, true love has always hit us men like lightening."

There was another break in the conversation. Hermione found herself savoring a buoyancy of spirit she hadn't felt in a long, long time.

"Cho didn't exactly like you at the beginning, either, you know," her dining companion suddenly remarked.

"She didn't?" This was news to Hermione. Cho Chang had always been extremely nice to her.

"She was jealous."

"Of _me_?"

"Yea. She used to talk about how smart you were. And about how you always stood up for your convictions. Like the S.P.E.W. protest you organized when you thought about the welfare of the House elves back at Hogwarts. While you thought they were being mistreated. She said you made her feel inferior."

"I certainly never tried--"

"Of course her _real_ problem was you and me."

"You and me?" Hermione shook her head. "There wasn't any 'you & me', Harry!"

"I know," he replied with a rueful look. "But it took Cho a while to accept that. She had trouble believing what I kept telling her."

"Which was?"

"That I'd never really thought of you as a girl."

Hermione chewed this over for a bit. Then, perversely, she asked, "Not even at 12 Grimmauld Place on our Christmas vacation our fifth year?"

The question clearly took Harry by surprise. "Uh…uh--"

"Never mind," she said, letting him—or was it herself?—off the hook. "What did you tell Cho you thought of me as? One of the boys?"

Harry tapped a fingernail against his bottle of ale. "It's hard to put it into words," he admitted. "I guess—well, you always seemed to have your own special category. Sort of, uh, genderless."

_Genderless?_

Jeez!

"Thanks a bunch, Harry?" Hermione said sarcastically.

"Oh, come on." His voice held a combination of defensiveness and accusation. "Be fair. Are you going to sit there and tell me you used to think of me as a guy?"

"Not thinking of you as a guy isn't the same as thinking of you as some kind of—a _neuter_!"

Harry made a quick, conciliatory gesture. "I realize that. 'Genderless' was a poor choice of words. I didn't mean it the way it sounded. Like I said, defining our relationship is hard. It's just…_There_!"

"'Just there,'" Hermione repeated slowly. Then she frowned, harkening back to the revelation that had diverted them off in this direction to begin with. "Did Cho finally understand about us?"

"Yeah. Sort of." Harry's mouth twisted. "She ended up deciding there was no reason to be jealous because the two of us were like brother and--"

"You all done?"

It was Scotty, the waiter, eager as ever.

"I am," Harry responded after a fractional pause "Hermione?"

"Me, too."

Scotty began clearing the table. Hermione and Harry sat in silence until he finished the task inquired whether they wanted dessert or coffee or both.

"Just the check, I think," Harry answered, glancing at Hermione for confirmation. She nodded.

As the waiter hustled away, Hermione decided it was time to get down to brass tacks.

"You know, Harry," she remarked. "I'm still trying to figure out what kind of help you think you need from me."

"It's simple, really," he replied. "I need you to go out with me."

Hermione's heart lurched one way. The rest of the world seemed to lurch the other way. She put her hands on the table, seeking some kind of stability.

"Go out?" she eventually asked. "Go out as in…on a _date_?"

"Not a real date." If Harry sensed the tizzy he'd thrown her into, he didn't show it. "A practice one."

Hermione opened and shut her mouth several times. Finally she stammered, "I, u-uh, don't, uh, think--"

Reaching forward, Harry covered her hands with his own.

"When people first started offering to fix me up," he said, "I was shocked. And more than a little angry. It was as though they were suggesting I cheat on Cho. But after a while, the shock faded and the anger went away. I began to understand that people were making the offers because they cared about me—because they wanted me to move on with my life."  
Hermione swallowed, acutely conscious of Harry's touch. "Cho would want that, too," she stated quietly.

"Do you honestly think so?" His fingers tightened around hers. He clearly placed a great deal of importance on her answer.

"Yes," she told him. "I honestly think so."

Harry exhaled on a long, slow sigh. His grip relaxed.

Hermione eased her hands out from under his. She waited a few moments, than carefully tried to steer their discussion back on track. "About the practice date…"

"One probably won't be enough," Harry said, picking up the cue. "More like three or four."

There had been many times in her life when Hermione had felt as though she could read her best friend's mind. This, unfortunately, was not one of them.

"I don't get this, Harry," she confessed. "You've apparently got a huge pool of available women waiting for you to dive into. Why in _Merlin's_ name do you want to go out on three or four 'practice' dates with me?"

"Because those practice dates might save me from drowning in what you so picturesquely call that 'huge pool of available women,'" he answered bluntly. "It all comes down to one thing, Hermione. _I have no real experience being a single guy_. I hooked up with Cho our fifth year of school and that was it. For all intents and purpose, I've been out of circulation for fifteen years. When it comes to the contemporary male-female thing, I'm lost."

"And you think going out with me can help you, er, find your way?"

"Don't you?"

This was not a question Hermione was prepared to answer. She parried it by asking, "Exactly what do you mean when you say 'practice'?"

"We go out. I do what I think a single guy should do on a date and you critique me."

The scenario had a certain logic to it, Hermione decided after a few moments of reflection. A certain _twisted_ logic, to be sure, but logic nonetheless.

Still, she couldn't help questioning Harry's basic premise. Based on her familiarity with the "Contemporary male-female thing," she seriously doubted that his self-proclaimed lack of experience would cause him any problems once he started meeting the allegedly nice girls to whom everyone was so anxious to introduce him.

Hmm. Maybe she could match him with a few—

No. Scratch that idea.

"Hermione?" Harry prompted.

She focused on him again, a strange quiver of awareness skittering up her spine. She found herself imagining his impact on some of the unmarried females of her acquaintance. It wasn't a soothing scenario.

And then Harry smiled at her. It was a smile Hermione couldn't remember having seen before. Then again, maybe she had…but without ever having registered the sensuality it contained.

She certainly registered it now.

Hermione cleared her throat. "What do you want me to say, Harry?"

"A simple 'yes' would be sufficient," her best friend declared.

* * *

**A.N.- **I would just like to say that I apologize for the long wait for this chapter, but as I said it's going to be taking me a while. I have just started school again and it's going to be hard updating these stories in the time frame that I want. I'm just going to have to update whenever the opportunity shows itself. But don't worry I'm not going to stop writing. I know alot of you liked this story and I'm very glad. I wasn't expecting anyone to like it. It was just an idea that popped out of my head and onto the computer screen. But anyways, I'm just rambbling on now. I want to get to thank my reviewers now. And those of you that are just passing through without reviewing, that's fine too, but I would highly appreciate it if you do.

**Malfoy-Jackie:** Thanks for you review. I'm glad you do.

**The Gryffindor Drummer:** Thankyou.

**peachie1st:** I'm glad you think so and I'll try to update as soon as I can.

**bookxluver:** Thanks, and believe me, I'll try.

**Paws.on.scroll: **I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I noticed that she really doesn't go through that in the books so I just wanted to experiment with her. And with Ron...I don't know if I'll have him too much in the story, but we'll see.

**softball cutie:** Well, at least your starting to like it.

**I am just a fan: **Thankyou for your review. I thought it was funny that you mention that. Maybe I'll take that to consideration, but not for this story. ;)

**Sarah: **Thanks, I'll try as soon as I can.

**icygaze52:** I'm really glad you do and don't worry, I don't plan on abandoning this story.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything that you recognize except things you don't recognize. Such as places, and new characters.

**A.N.:** I'm really sorry it took me almost a whole year to update, but I've been going through a lot of things and stress. If you want the whole details, email me and I'll write you back as soon as I can. Hopefully you enjoy this chapter.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 3:**

"No."

"No?"

"Wha—Oh no. Not you, Harry" Hermione said. Harry thought she sounded frazzled and more than a bit fed up. "Look somebody just shoved the copy of a new column spot under my nose. Can you hang on while I check it over?"

"Sure."

"Thanks. This shouldn't take long."

There was an abrupt _click_ followed by tinny strains of a familiar pop tune.

Harry wedged the phone receiver between his shoulder and chin. Swiveling his chair to face his desk in his office at home, he looked over some files from work. He wrote a series of words onto the paperwork, frowning thoughtfully at the information that flashed before him. He wrote a bit more, his frown relaxing into a satisfied smile.

"I was speedin' down the highway," he sang, improvising nonsense lyrics to go with the mind-numbing telephone music as his fingers danced across his desktop. "When a two-faced policeman--"

_Click_

"Harry?" It was Hermione again. Her tone was considerably mellower than it had been. Harry deduced that whomever had been unwise enough to shove a copy under her nose had had it summarily shoved back for a re-write.

"Still here," he told her.

"Sorry I kept you waiting."

"Don't mention it. I figured you were giving me a taste of the nineties' version of playing hard to get."

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then, "I beg your pardon?"

Harry leaned back in his chair, smiling. "A guy calls a modern career woman up and asks her out on a date," he elaborated. "But instead of responding with a quick yes or no, she leaves him hanging on hold while she cuts some poor underling off at the knees."

There was another short silence. Then Hermione started to laugh. The sound was tantalizing husky. It insinuated itself into Harry's ear like a warm breath.

"Not a bad scenario." The acknowledgment was wry. "But if this particular modern career woman had been cutting this particular underling off anywhere, it wouldn't have been at the knees."

"Ouch. What was the copywriting crime? Dangling participles?"

"Worse. Much worse."

"But nothing you can't handle." Harry made the assertion with unalloyed sincerity. Hermione was one of the most competent people he knew. She also had a knack for kicking butt when butt-kicking was required.

"Well…"

"Hey, you got me through Professor McGonagall's class, didn't you?"

"That was quid pro quo for your teaching me and some of the other students in D.A.? Besides you weren't the literary equivalent of tone deaf."

"Really? I seem to remember you telling me that if abusing the English language were a federal offense, I'd be on Wizards's most wanted list."

A second laugh rippled down the line. Funny, Harry reflected, reaching up and jerking loose the button on his shirt. He must have heard Hermione's laughter a million times in the past twenty years. Yet he'd never noticed how…provocative…it sounded.

"I was exaggerating to make a point."

"Mmm."

There was a pause.

"I think you mentioned the word 'date' a few minutes ago?" Hermione eventually prompted.

"Yeah, I did." Harry shifted, experiencing a sudden prickle of nervousness. "We, uh, left things undecided when I brought you home from Rio Brave on Saturday. I was wondering how tomorrow night was for you."

"Tomorrow night," Hermione repeated. Harry heard a rustling sound, as though she were paging through a calendar. "Hmm. That's Friday…"

She's already got a date, he thought, his body tightening. And not a "practice" one with a pal, either. A _real_ one.

Well, why the heck shouldn't she? He demanded of himself a moment later. Hermione had devoted the past fifteen months to taking care of him. She'd gone above and beyond the call of duty, even for a best friend. She had every right to decide that enough was enough—that it was time to start tending to her own long-deferred needs.

If only he'd thought the situation through before he blithely picked up the phone and punched in her office number. If he'd done so, he would have realized that it was very likely she'd have plans for tomorrow evening. As ignorant of the ins and outs of the single's scene as he might be, even _he_ knew Friday nights were prime dating time.

Harry spent a surprisingly unpleasant few seconds speculating about the identity of the man Hermione might be seeing the following evening. Could she have gotten back together with that muggle architect she'd been dating around the time Cho had gotten sick? He wondered. Or maybe she'd take up taken up with the gallery owner he recalled her discussing in connection with her fundraising work for the London Symphony. And what about the hot-shot, Draco Malfoy? Hadn't she made several admiring references to him in recent weeks?

Harry was very surprised when Hermione started seeing Malfoy. Very surprised. Yes, Malfoy had switched sides and was very reliable throughout the war, but Harry and Ron couldn't forget what he had done to all three of them during their school years. The fact that Hermione was a very forgiving person was the only reason Harry gave Malfoy a chance and the benefit of the doubt. He never did like Malfoy though. Something about him bugged Harry. Maybe it was—

"Harry?" It was Hermione.

He blinked, wondering what he missed. "Uh, yeah?"

"I just told you that tomorrow night is fine with me."

"Oh." He raked a hand back through his hair. "That's great."

There was an awkward pause.

"Is something wrong?" Hermione finally asked.

"No." The denial was quick. "Everything's fine."

"You sound…odd."

"Sorry." Although Harry wasn't certain an apology was necessary, he felt impelled to offer one. "I, uh, guess I'm surprised you're not busy tomorrow night. What with it being Friday. Plus, I'm calling at the last minute--"

"Calling at the last minute is phoning from your car on the way over to a woman's house."

Harry straightened in his chair. "Guys actually _do_ that?"

"Not to me they don't." Hermione's voice was crisp and confident. "At least, not more than once."

"You let them know who's boss, huh?"

"Let's just say I make it clear that I'm not so desperate for a date I'll let myself be treated like a takeout pizza. I require a lot more than fifteen minutes advance before I'm ready for pick up. I respect myself. I expect other people to do the same."

It occurred to Harry that he'd just heard a good summary of Hermione Jane Granger's philosophy of life. He wondered fleetingly how many of the women with whom people kept trying to fix him up shared her attitude. He also wondered whether there was a quick way of culling those who did from those who didn't.

"Never let it be said that Harry Potter can't take a hint," he declared, easing back in his chair. "So. Respectfully, would you like to go to a movie with me tomorrow night?"

"A movie? On a first date?"

"Don't men and women do that anymore?"

"Of course they do. It's just that, uh…"

"Yes?"

"Look, Harry…were you serious when you said you wanted me to critique your, er, single guy technique?"

"Absolutely," he confirmed without missing a beat. "Let me have it, Hermione. What's wrong with my idea?"

"Think about it. What happens when a man and a woman go to the movies?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"No, you twit. It's not a trick question."

Harry chuckled. "Okay. Just checking. Mmm. Let me see. What happens when a man and a woman go to the movies? Well, first they drive to one of those multi-screen theatres, line up, and buy a pair of overpriced tickets. Then they go inside and buy overpriced refreshments at the concession stand. Then they head into the theatre, search out a pair of descent seats, and crawl over a bunch of people in order to get to them. As soon, as they settle in, a couple with a crying baby plunks down in front of them. Then a trio of talkative little old ladies take up residence in the seats directly behind them. Shortly after that, a gang of teenagers files in. Eventually the lights go down, the movie comes on, and the man and the woman watch it. If it's funny, they both laugh. If it's sad they both get choked up—although the man pretends he isn't. If it's scary the woman grabs onto the man, he probably uses that as an opportunity to cop a--"

"Harry!"

"What?" he asked, feigning innocence. "Don't contemporary single guys cop feels?"

"Not unless they want to be accused of sexual harassment."

"Oh."

"Modern men are expected to ask permission before they start groping."

"You mean, 'May I please put my hand on your--'"

"Let's get back to the movies," Hermione cut in decisively. "Is talking on your list of things a man and woman do when they go to one?"

"Talking? Of course--" Harry stopped, grasping the point she was trying to make. "Oh _I_ get it."

"A first date is supposed to be an opportunity for two people to get to now each other," Hermione stressed. "It's difficult for them to take advantage of that opportunity when they're sitting in the dark, staring at a big screen, scarfing down empty calories from the refreshment counter."

Unbidden, Harry's mind flashed back to his second date with Cho. He'd taken her to a movie. The evening had pretty much confirmed to the pattern Hermione had just described. Given the shakiness of his adolescent social skills, this had been perfectly fine with him. It had been hard enough to muster the words he'd needed to ask Cho if she'd like to go out with him. There was no way he could have carried on an extended conversation with her during the date itself.

As for the business of copping a feel…well, the closest he'd come to _that_ had been the heady half-second when his hand had brushed Cho's as he'd passed her a paper napkin. He'd damned near swooned at the conduct.

Harry glanced toward the right corner of his desk, his gaze settling on a silver-framed photograph of his late wife. The romantic-looking portrait had been taken a week before their wedding. He kept a copy of the same picture tucked away in his wallet.

Rubbing the base of his left ring finger with the ball of his thumb, Harry registered the absence of the wide gold band he'd worn for nearly five years. He'd buried the band along with the woman who'd given it to him.

_Cho,_ he thought painfully._ Oh, sweetheart._

"I'm not saying going to a movie is a bad idea," Hermione went on, sounding as though she felt the need to backpedal. "I mean--"

"I understand exactly what you mean," Harry interrupted, resolutely steering his thoughts away from the past. "And bad idea or not, I'll bet I can come up with a better one between now and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow when I pick you up."

* * *

In Hermione's considered opinion, Harry did.

Come up with a better idea than going to the movies, that is.

"How in Merlin's name did you get a reservation here?" she asked him after they'd been seated at an elegantly appointed table for two in one of London's most popular restaurants. "This place had been booked solid since the day it opened."

Harry shrugged, his expression bland. "Connections."

"Connections?" Hermione picked up the intricately folded linen napkin from the plate in front of her and spread it across her lap.

"You know the extra courses I'm teaching at the Auror training?"

She nodded.

"The father, who is a muggle, of one of my students happens to own this place."

"Ah."

"I promised the young man a good mark if he got me a table tonight."

For a split second Hermione thought he was serious. Then she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Oh, honestly, Harry," she chided, starting to laugh.

A moment later an immaculately attired waiter approached their table. He presented them with a pair of handwritten menus, and then politely inquired whether they'd like anything from the bar while they considered the evening's culinary offerings.

"So what do you think?" Harry asked after the man had taken their beverage orders and moved away. He leaned forward, his expression intent. "Would a woman like coming here on a first date?"

Deep down, Hermione realized he hadn't intended the question quite the way it came out. Unfortunately, this realization didn't prevent his words from flicking her on an unexpectedly tender spot.

"Well, gee," she returned, her tone like acid-laced honey. "How would _I_ know what a woman would like?"

Harry looked at her, clearly startled. Then he grimaced. "Oh, Merlin. Hermione, I'm sorry. I wasn't--"

She dismissed the apology with a gesture. "I know it's difficult for you, Harry," she told him. "But this practice date scheme of yours isn't going to work unless you can start thinking of me—at least occasionally—as having a gender."

Harry remained silent for a long time, staring into her face. Then the nature of his scrutiny changed. His gaze began to slide downward. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

From her eyes to her lips.

From her lips to her breasts.

By the time he'd completed his leisurely visual inventory and brought his gaze back up to meet hers, Hermione's body was tingling as though it had been infused with electrified champagne. Her breathing was a swift and shallow.

"If there's going to be a problem with our practice dates," Harry drawled, his voice several notes deeper than usual. "It won't be due to me forgetting you're female."


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything that you recognize. Anything you don't does belong to me though. Toodles

* * *

**Chapter four:**

That was the first of a series of remarks that left Hermione increasingly off-balance as the evening unfolded. It wasn't until they were midway through their main course that she realized exactly what was going on.

_Harry was flirting with her!_

His approach wasn't sweep-her-off-her-feet bold. Nor was it seduce-her-down-the-garden-path subtle. It was...well, Hermione wasn't certain how to describe it except to say it was pretty darned effective!

But it doesn't mean anything, she reminded herself firmly, reaching for the glass of Chablis she'd ordered to go with her meal. This is practice, not personal. Harry's acting the way he thinks a single guy is supposed to. And she was to be critiquing him.

Hermione took a sip of her white wine. All right. Fine. She'd do what she was supposed to do.

Critique number one.

Um...

Er...

She couldn't. She just couldn't! Harry was her best friend. Their relationship was unique. She couldn't treat him like a...a--

Like a what? she demanded of herself. Like a _man_? Like an attractive, eligible_ man_ who's invited you out to dinner?

Hermione's earlier admonition came echoing back.

_I know it's difficult for you, Harry, _she'd said._ But this practice date scheme of yours isn't going to work unless you can start thinking of me--at least occasionally--as having a gender._

_Et, tu, Hermione,_ she thought.

The success of this exercise wasn't solely dependent on Harry's perception of her. Her perception of him was an integral ingredient, as well. Therefore, it was incumbent upon her to--

Hold on.

Just a few moments ago, when she'd been trying to define what it was that she couldn't treat Harry like, hadn't she used the adjective 'attractive'?

Why, yes. Yes, she had.

And the use of that word had been unthinking. Automatic. Instinctive. Hadn't it?

Oh, absolutely.

Well? Didn't that prove she wasn't entirely oblivious to Harry's, uh, _gender_?

Something deep inside Hermione shifted. It was the psychological equivalent of a movement by one of the Earth's tectonic plates. Not enough to trigger a major quake, but sufficient to touch off a palpable emotional tremor.

She set down her wineglass very carefully. Then, with equal deliberation, she began to take stock of the man sitting opposite her.

His hands drew her attention first. Men's hands often did. Many of her female friends talked about noticing a man's eyes or butt--depending on the direction of his approach--first. She tended to begin by checking out hands.

Harry's were well-shaped, with flexible fingers and closely pared nails. There was a feathery dusting of light brown hairs on the backs of them.

They were trustworthy hands. Obviously strong, yet endowed with a disciplined economy of movement that seemed to promise that this strength would never be misused.

What would it be like to be touched by those hands? Hermione wondered suddenly. Not in friendship or fun. That sort of contact held no mystery for her. But touched in the intimately erotic way a man--

She slammed the brakes on this train of thought. Not that she was terribly shocked by the direction it had taken. She was an experienced adult, after all, not an unfledged innocent. Still, there was such a thing as going to far, too fast--especially for someone whose only objective was to help her best friend get a social life.

Shifting in her seat, Hermione transferred her gaze from Harry's hands to his face.

His mouth.

Quirkily made, yet compellingly male. Bracketed by grooves that were deeper than those found on most thirty year old males.

His nose.

Ferrule-straight, but just slightly off center. A potent counterbalance to his angular cheekbones and stubborn jaw. While the idiosyncratic combination of features didn't add to the matinee idol handsomeness, it had an undeniable appeal.

His eyes.

Deep set beneath level brows, with a web of finely etched lines radiating from the outer-corners. A changeable green in color, they exuded integrity and intelligence.

Harry James Potter wasn't the best-looking man she'd ever been out with. And yet, the adjective "attractive" very definitely--

"Hermione?"

She started so violently she nearly knocked over her wineglass. "Y-yes?"

Harry regarded her through slightly narrowed eyes. "Do I have a piece of spinach stuck between my teeth?"

"Spinach?" Hermione darted a bewildered glance at his plate. How could there be spinach stuck between his teeth? He'd ordered lamb chops with asparagus!

"You've been staring at me."

"Oh." She scrambled for a way to explain her behavior. Telling the truth didn't strike her as a viable option. "I, uh, did... uh, you get your hair cut?"

"I got a trim this afternoon." Harry frowned. "Why? Is there something wrong with the way it looks?"

"No." Hermione shook her head. "Of course not. Why would you think that?"

"How would you react if someone asked you if you'd done something to your hair?"

"That's different."

Harry lifted his brows. "How?"

"Women are _supposed_ to be paranoid about their hair."

"But men aren't?"

Hermione hesitated, conscious that this exchange was veering into absurdity. "Uh, no," she finally said.

"Try telling that to some poor bloke who's afraid he's going bald."

"That's certainly not anything _you_ have to be concerned about," Hermione observed, eyeing Harry's jet black thatch of hair.

"Not yet anyway."

The caveat surprised her. "Are you saying you're worried about losing your hair?"

"Well, it doesn't prey on my mind twenty-four hours a day." Harry responded dryly. "But, yeah. I do feel a nasty little twinge on the mornings I notice there seem to be a few extra strands clinging to the bottom of the bathroom sink."

Hermione fiddled with the stem of her wineglass. Strange, she reflected. She'd never imagined that Harry might be insecure about his appearance.

Other men, sure. She'd dated men so anxious about their faces and physiques that they couldn't pass a polished surface without doing an assessment. But _Harry_? She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him glance in a mirror!

Yes, he'd been self-conscious about his looks during adolescence. Who hadn't been? Besides, he'd seemed to overcome his geeky self-image after he'd shot up eight inches and fallen in love with Cho Chang. Hermione simply couldn't picture him brooding over his hairline.

"I don't suppose harboring deep-seated anxieties about baldness is something a contemporary single guy should admit on a first date," Harry commented, clearly fishing for feedback.

"Well, that depends," Hermione replied judiciously. "The present-day-style male is expected to be sensitive enough to share his vulnerabilities."

"Oh?"

"Of course, if he's _too_ sensitive--" she flashed an ironic smile. "Present-day-style females will think he's a wimp."

"Merlin." Harry shook his head and speared a stalk of asparagus with his fork. "Why do you women have to make life so complicated?"

A spark in his green eyes told Hermione she was being baited. She opened her mouth to bite, but was forestalled by a thoroughly unwelcome greeting.

"Why Hermione Granger! Darling, I haven't seen you in ages!"

Hermione didn't have to look to determine the source of this interruption. The Southern-fried, sugar-coated voice could belong to only one person. Her name was Belinda--"Call me Honey Chile"--Reese and she was an ex-muggle-beauty queen whose favorite title was "Mrs." Although Belinda had a comfortable income thanks to multiple monthly alimony checks, she occasionally earned a little extra spending money by modeling. That's how Hermione had met her.

"Hello, Belinda," she greeted the magnolia-skinned blonde. "You're looking well."

"I've just come back from the cutest little island in the Caribbean." Belinda patted her platinum-pale tresses. "What about you, love?"

Hermione glanced across the table at Harry. While he wasn't exhibiting the lost-his-brains-and-thinking-with-his-gonads response Belinda evoked from most men, it was clear as crystal that he wasn't oblivious to the blonde's physical assets.

"I'm just fine, thank you," she said, trying not to grind her teeth. "I don't think you know my, uh, friend, Harry Potter. Harry, this is Belinda Reese."

Harry rose to his feet in a seamless movement and extended his right hand. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Reese."

"My, my, my," Belinda responded, accepting the proffered appendage. "I do admire a man with good manners. Call me Honey Chile, Mr. Potter. Everybody does."

Hermione darted another look at her "date." While an encounter with someone of Belinda's ilk probably was necessary for any man seeking to familiarize himself with the singles scene, she couldn't help wishing that this meeting had come later--a _lot_ later--in Harry's orientation process.

"Call me Harry, ah, Honey Chile," he suggested, reclaiming his hand.

"Why, thank you." Belinda preened a little. "I most definitely will." She preened a little more. "Well, I really must be going. I'm meeting one of my ex's for dinner. Nice to see you again, Hermione. You take care of yourself."

Hermione made a gesture that was a cross a bye-bye and a brush-off. The other woman responded with a languid waggle of her long-nailed fingers then sashayed away on four-inch stiletto heels.

"Interesting," Harry commented, reseating himself.

"Don't even think about it." The words were out before Hermione had time to consider their implications--much less to prevent herself from uttering them.

"Excuse me?"

Oh, well, Hermione thought with a mental grimace. In for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, Harry had asked to be enlightened about the contemporary male-female thing. It wasn't as though she was butting in with unsolicited advice.

"Belinda 'Honey Chile' Reese is the kind of woman who treats men like kites," she said flatly.

"_Kites?_"

Hermione gestured. "She gives them just enough string to let them think they're flying free. Then she yanks on the string, hauls them in and hangs them on a hook someplace until she's ready to play again."

Harry rubbed his jaw. "And here I thought she seemed sort of sweet."

He was teasing her. Hermione knew he was teasing her. She also knew she probably deserved it. Even so...

"You have a lot to learn about women, Mr. Potter," she informed him.

Harry smiled. Slowly. Sexily. From somewhere deep inside Hermione came to the realization that he hadn't so much as bared a bicuspid at the blonde and busty Belinda.

"That's why I'm out with you, Ms. Granger," he said.

* * *

**A.N. - **I just wanted to thank all my reviewers. Old and new. You're all so wonderful and I appreciate your comments on my story. As I recently found out, my e-mail account was canceled and I had to create it again. Anyhow its back up if you want to write me. If you have any questions that is. I really like how things are going now so you'll be hearing from me frequently. I'll be updating at least every week. If not that it'll be two weeks. I'll be able to do it now. Anyways I hope you enjoyed this chapter. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything you do not recognize does belong to me though.

* * *

**Chapter Five:**

"_A foul?_" Hermione yelled through cupped hands. "Are you daft? Get a pair of glasses! That was no _foul!_"

"Gee, Hermione," Harry said through a bite of a pumpkin pastie. "Why don't you tell us how you really feel?"

Hermione turned in her seat and nailed him with a disdainful look. "People who didn't start cheering for the Chudley Canons until they won the championship have no right to criticize people who were rooting for them when they were the worst team in the league."

Harry took a moment to chew and swallow, then another moment to take a gulp of ale. Hermione's passion for the Canons had always amused him. She was so sane and sensible about everything else. Except, perhaps, for the enduring crush she had on Gilderoy Lockhart. But that was an interest she confided only to her closest friends. Her devotion to the Canons, she flaunted like a flag.

Going to this game had been Hermione's idea. She'd extended the invitation six nights before, when he'd brought her home from the inaugural practice date. While she hadn't specifically said the outing should be categorized as their second date, he'd decided to treat it as such.

Within certain limits, of course. Although modern male-female etiquette might dictate otherwise, he had no intention of passing up a chance to twit his best friend about her unswerving support for her favorite team.

"That was a foul, Hermione," he said, fighting back a grin.

She responded with a singularly indelicate noise. "Traitor."

"Better than a blind loyalist."

"Just because you--" Hermione broke off, the crack of a wooden bat connecting solidly with a leather-covered ball diverting her attention back to the brightly illuminated field before them. She surged to her feet shouting. "C'mon! C'mon! Score! Score!"

Thousands of other fans were screaming variations on the same imperative. A few seconds later the stadium erupted in a thunderous cheer as one of the Canons' chasers dived around the opponents Keeper and scored a goal.

"All right!" Harry exclaimed as the referee signaled to continue the game. While he wasn't a Canon's fanatic, he wasn't immune to the thrill of a Quidditch game win.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Hermione exulted, raising her arms in triumph.

"And Canons take the lead with 110 to 70," an announcer boomed through the stadium.

"Whew." Hermione sank back down into her seat, removing her official Canons cap and swatting a lock of chin-length brown hair off her cheek. She turned toward Harry. "Can I have a sip of your ale?"

"Sure."

She took more than a sip from the condensation-fogged plastic cup he handed her. Harry watched as she did so, his gaze tracking the working of her slender throat then drifting downward.

Like himself, Hermione had been a late bloomer. But just as he'd finally shot up, she'd eventually filled out. She'd never been in the cup-floweth-over category, he decided as he studied her modest t-shirted curves, but she definitely looked as though she could pass the enough-for-a-handful test.

"Thanks," she said, returning the beverage container with a dimple-flushing smile. "I needed that."

If she noticed his assessment of her shape, she gave no indication of it. While Harry supposed he should be grateful for this, he found her seeming obliviousness irritated him. Had this been a "real" date—had he been, say, that Draco Malfoy with the helmet of cement-sprayed hair—he was damned sure she would have registered being ogled!

Then again...maybe not. Hermione had less vanity than just about any female he knew. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he'd seen her fuss over her appearance.

Was it possible she didn't think such fussing was worth it? Harry asked himself suddenly. Was it possible she didn't know how appealing she was?

So what if her features were to asymmetrical to meet the standards of so-called classic beauty? So what if they were too strong to be classified as "cute"? There were qualities in Hermione's face—the generosity of her mouth and the warmth of her big, brown eyes to name just two—that caught a man's interest and held it. Surely she must have discovered that!

And then there were those long, slim legs of hers. No one could persuade Harry that Hermione didn't know what kind of assets _they_ were! Just look at the way the skimpy white shorts she had on showed them off.

Heck! Just look at the way the snug-fitting garment displayed the firmly feminine contours of her backside! Now _that_ was a view guaranteed to kick any male pulse into gear.

"Oh, _no!_" Hermione leapt up, her creamy-skinned face flushing with dismay. "No, no, no, no!"

A despairing groan rolled through the stands as the opposing team's seeker fired up from the ground flashing the golden snitch he'd just caught.

"And that's the end of the game," the stadium announcer intoned. "And the final score is: Hartland Harpies 220; Chudley Canons 110."

"That was terrible," Hermione moaned, collapsing into her seat. She slumped forward, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes as though trying to blot out the athletic incompetence she'd just witnessed.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, watching her intently. "Terrible."

There was a pause. Finally Hermione lifted her head and looked at him. "Why are you staring at me?" she demanded.

He opened his mouth. After a moment he closed it.

"Yes?" An emotion he couldn't put a name to fizz in the depths of her dark, long-lashed eyes like carbonation in a cola drink.

Harry hesitated, the clichéd phrase about "No guts, no glory" zipping through his mind. "Did you, uh, do something to your, uh, h-hair?" he finally stammered.

Hermione blinked several times. Then, remarkably, she started to laugh. The sound rippled through him like liquid sunshine, warming every fiber of his body.

"You know, Harry," she said, taking his cup of ale from his suddenly slackened grasp and raising it in a saucy salute. "You may have less to learn about women than I thought."

* * *

"Call me old-fashioned," Harry declared, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his car. "But I'm never going to get used to women doing stuff like that."

"Like what?" Hermione asked, undoing her seat belt. She and Harry had just parked in front of her condo after an evening of Cajun food and dancing. "Patting you on the rear end?"

He stiffened visibly. "The place was crowded. It could have been an accident."

"Mmm." Hermione considered telling him that seemed highly unlikely to her. Whether Harry knew it or not, his tush was extremely...er, pattable. Especially when it was encased in tight, wash-faded jeans the way it was this evening. Although she'd never goosed a guy herself, she could understand why another woman might succumb to the temptation Harry's backside presented.

Of course, understanding didn't mean she had to _like_ it...

Harry unhooked his own seat belt and turned to face her. "Tell me the truth, Hermione. Have you ever waited for another woman to go to the ladies' room so you could hit on the man that she was with?"

Hermione shook her head. "That's not my style. But you'd better get used to being vamped. The brunette who slipped you her phone number tonight was just the beginning. You're a very desirable commodity."

"Oh, come on."

"You're straight. You're single. You're attractive." She ticked the qualities off on her fingers. "And you have a very successful job."

Harry remained silent for several moments, and then asked, "A 'desirable commodity,' you said?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I guess I can adjust to the 'desirable' part." His mouth twisted. "Where was all this female attention when I was suffering through puberty?"

"You wouldn't have known what to do with it."

"True." Chuckling wryly, Harry swung open the driver's side door. "I'm not sure I know what to do with it now, either."

Hermione waited patiently while he walked around and opened the door on her side of the car. "Thank you," she said as he handed her out.

"You're welcome," he responded, shutting the door. "I was meaning to ask if it was okay for me to do this."

"To do what"

Harry gestured. "The door thing."

"The..._door_...thing?"

"Yeah. Am I—or am I not—supposed to open them for the women I take out? I refuse to light cigarettes because I don't want to encourage anyone to smoke. But what about opening doors? Is there a rule? Or is this another one of those damned-if-a-guy-does, damned-if-a-guy-doesn't situations like that sensitive-but-not-to-sensitive routine you tried to explain to me during our first date?"

Hermione had to tilt her chin to meet his gaze. Harry—with whom she'd once stood eye-to-eye—was now six feet to her five-foot-five.

"I don't think the 'door thing' is significant anymore," she said. "I'm not sure it ever really was, to tell the truth. I, personally, put it in the same category as the great shaving debate."

"The _what?_"

A warm spring breeze sent a lock of hair fluttering across Hermione's face. Before she had a chance to brush it away, Harry reached forward and casually smoothed it back into place. As light as the contact was, it sent a quiver of response arrowing through her.

"The, uh, great shaving debate," she repeated after several tremulous seconds. "It revolves around the question of whether women shave their legs and underarms are victims of the oppressive standards of beauty imposed by a male chauvinist society."

"I take it you don't spend much time anguishing over the matter."

"Let's just say I think women have a lot more important things to be concerned about than the socio-political implications of using depilatories—or of having doors opened for them."

"Yeah." Harry nodded his agreement, shoving his hands into the pockets of the lightweight leather jacket he'd worn with his jeans. "Me, too."

The walk from his car to her condomonium was made in silence. Once they arrived at their destination, they turned to face each other. The light that hung next to her front door cast a pale spill of illumination over both of them.

The silence stretched on.

"Well," Harry finally said, taking his hand out of his pockets, "I guess it's time for me to make my big move."

Hermione's heart performed a sudden hop-skip-jump. "You're big move?"

"This _is _our third date."

"So?" Her voice was only marginally steadier than her pulse.

"So, I skimmed through a couple of paperback romances during the last few weeks and I noticed that the hero tends to make his move on the heroine at the end of their third date. Unless, of course, he was overwhelmed by passion and pounced on her the first time they met."

"You've been reading _romance_ novels?"

Harry shrugged nonchalantly, apparently undisturbed by the tone of her question. "I remember how Cho used to talk about them and I figured I might pick up a few pointers. I mean, romances are basically written by women, for women, right? They offer a guy insights into the feminine psyche he'd probably have trouble getting otherwise."

"I...see." His explanation actually made a great deal of sense.

"Have you ever read any?"

"Romance novels?"

"Yeah."

"A, uh, few."

"And?"

"Some of the language is a little flowery for my taste. But I enjoy the relationships. And the happy endings."

He grinned. "No less than I'd expect from a woman who has a nine-year-old wedding bouquet bagged up in plastic."

Hermione sighed. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Nope." Harry paused, cocking his head. "What do you think about that famous cover model? You know—the big, blonde guy with the incredible hairless chest who can't seem to keep his shirt on?"

"Oh, puh-leeze."

"Not your type?"

"Hardly."

"I'll bet your heart still belongs to Gilderoy."

"Gilderoy? As in...Lockhart?"

"Who else?"

"I wouldn't call my, uh, admiration for Gilderoy Lockhart a _thing_," Hermione quibbled. The image of a tuxedo-clad man and an elegantly gowned woman glided through her mind. She wasn't certain about the genesis of her fascination with this sort of male-female partnership. She only knew that her fantasy with Lockhart was an enduring one.

"Hey, do you remember the secret ballroom dancing lessons you conned me into taking back in fourth year?" Harry asked suddenly. "The ones in the old Charms classroom after curfew?"

"_Conned_ you?" Hermione echoed, stiffening with indignation. "You made me shell out to do your homework for two weeks before you'd agree to be my partner!"

"Well..."

"You hated it, didn't you."

Harry seemed genuinely taken aback by this accusation.

"No," he denied, shaking his head. "Of course not. I'll admit I had some misgivings about going. I mean, waltzing and all that stuff seemed kind of wimpy to me. But once we got there..." He paused, an odd expression stealing into his eyes. "You wore a cream-colored dress to the first class. And flat shoes with little bows in front. Sort of like ballet slippers."

Hermione moistened her lips, conscious of an abrupt acceleration in her pulse. It had been years since she and Harry had talked about this particular chapter in their friendship. She had no idea his recollection of it was so vivid.

"My palms started sweating as soon as I took hold of you," he continued reflectively. "I was afraid I was going to leave wet handprints everywhere I touched. And there seemed to be a total disconnect between my brain and my feet. I felt like such a klutz."

"At least you didn't keep mixing up your right and left the way I did."

"Maybe not. But _you_ had a sense of rhythm. Much of a wizard I suddenly was, I couldn't count out a three-four beat to save my life." Smiling slightly, Harry lifted one hand and brushed his knuckles against her face. "I like the dancing cheek-to-cheek part. I didn't think I would, but I did. I liked it a lot."

"You hummed in my ear," Hermione recalled. Her heart was pounding very rapidly. She could feel herself beginning to tremble.

"Nerves." He traced the line of her jaw with his fingertips. "Your hair was longer then. Below your shoulders. I remember thinking how soft it was. Like silk. And it smelled so clean..."

"H-Harry." She invoked his name in a shaky whisper.

"Shh." He brought his other hand up, cupping her chin, tilting her head back. He charted the curve of her lower lip with the faintly callused pad of one thumb. "I'm about to make my big move."

And then he lowered his head and began to kiss her.

The first few moments of contact were tentative. Testing. Harry's mouth feathered across hers, his breath misting over her sensitized flesh in a gentle caress.

He nibbled.

He nipped.

Finally, he staked his claim.

Hermione's lungs emptied in a rushing sigh. Her lashes fluttered down. Her arms came up and circled Harry's neck.

Harry angled his face, seeking more intimate access. She felt a sandpapery hint of beard stubble. The rest was all seductive softness.

His tongue teased against the corners of her lips then flirted along the center seam. An irresistible combination of instinct and appetite made Hermione open to him. Harry deepened the kiss, accepting all she was offering and demanding even more.

Ribbons of longing unfurled within Hermione. Twisting. Twining. She shifted restlessly, whimpering against Harry's ardent, pleasuring mouth. One of his hands fisted possessively at the back of her head, clutching her hair. The other slid down her spine, fingers splaying, drawing her close.

She wanted him. She's never dreamed of such a possibility, but she _wanted_ Harry James Potter!

And he wanted her. She could feel it in the hunger of his kiss and the hardness of his body.

Or...could she?  
The question slithered into Hermione's sensation-fogged mind like a poisoness serpent. She knew her desire was very specific. It was for Harry and Harry alone. But how could she be sure his desire was equally single-minded? He was a healthy man who'd been without a woman for nearly a year and a half. Was it _her_ he wanted, or simply a willing body?"

Perhaps Harry sensed her sudden uncertainty. Perhaps he experienced a surge of his own. Whatever the case, his hold began to ease. A few moments later he lifted his mouth from hers and released her completely.

Hermione took an unsteady step backward. She was shaking. Her breath was coming in short, sharp pants. Half of her was in rebellion against the implications of what had just happened. The other half was reveling in them.

Harry's condition seemed as unsettled as her own. There was a febrile gleam in his eyes and a flush rode high on his sharp cheekbones.

"Hermione?" he asked. His voice was rasping, almost harsh. Had she had her eyes closed when he'd spoken, Hermione wasn't certain she would've identified it to being his. "Hermione, I didn't—I mean, I never expected--"

"Neither did I," she responded with a shattered little laugh.

There was a pause. Then, "Are you--" Harry gestured, "—okay?"

"Fine. Are, uh, you?"

"Oh, yeah."

There was another pause. It was as uncomfortable as the previous one, only longer. Much, much longer.

"I don't think you need to worry about drowning in that pool of eligible women anymore, Harry," Hermione finally said, coming to a decision.

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Forget about practice dates. You're ready for the real thing."

* * *

**A.N.**- Well, I want to thank all my reviewers. You guys are really great! I really appreciate all the comments you leave me. It truly makes my day. I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I did writing it. I was a bit ansy on the kissing scene because I wasn't sure what to do with it, but it seems as if it came out alright. Well, I'll update in about another week or so. Thank you all for your patience.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you don't recognize does belong to me though.

**A.N-** Hey guys! I just want to thank you all for reviewing...and even thoughs that don't review for at least reading it. It really makes me so happy just see that people are enjoying it just as much as I have writing it. Believe me, the chapter will start moving on a little faster now. I know I've been slow at updating, but you know real life gets in the way of things. Things will start speeding up from where the last chapter ended. It'll move on way quicker. This chapter is from Harry's point of view...sort of second point of view. Anyways, enjoy this chapter!

* * *

Kissing Hermione had been a mistake.

Harry had acknowledged as much as he'd walked—not entirely steadily—away from her front door and toward his parked car after she'd let herself into her condomonium.

Yet seven weeks after committing the error, he was still grappling with the emotional implications of it.

He was also trying to figure out why, when it came to dates, the "real thing" seemed infinitely less satisfying than the practice one.

"So?" Lavender Weasley inquired, her dulcet voice discreetly lowered. "What do you think of her?"

Harry slanted a quick glance at his best friend's, Ron Weasley, wife then returned his attention to the lavish display of food in front of him. "Too much is not enough" had always been the Weasley's philosophy when it came to arranging refreshments for the open house they'd held on the last Sunday in July for more than nine years. This year, however, the abundance of choices was almost overwhelming.

"Harry?" Lavender prodded, plainly determined to get an answer.

Disciplining his expression into neutrality, Harry transferred a piece of fried chicken from a piled-high buffet platter to the plain white china plate he was holding.

_What do you think of her?_

How many times had he been asked that question—or a variation of it—since he'd started dating? he wondered.

A dozen?

Two dozen?

More. Definitely more. And he was getting pretty sick of it.

Taking the plunge into London's "huge pool" of available women was one thing. Being expected to assess every unmarried female who floated into view was entirely another. He was still trying to figure out what his standards of judgment were supposed to be!

Oddly enough, one of the few people who hadn't put the "What do you think?" inquiry to him was the woman who'd done the most to get him into the singles' social swim. Hermione Granger seemed genuinely indifferent to how—or with whom—he was applying the insights into the "contemporary male-female thing" he'd gotten from her. This wasn't to say that he'd made a concerted effort to fill his best friend in on how he'd been filling up his personal calendar since she'd called a halt to their practice dates. He hadn't. In point of fact, he'd been grateful for her apparent lack of curiosity. As open as he and Hermione had always been with each other, he'd felt a certain sense of constraint in the wake of the kiss they shared. Talking with her about the various women with whom he'd been going out seemed inappropriate.

No. It was worse than that. Talking with Hermione about other women seemed downright _unnatural_.

Harry realized that there were a lot of reasons for this. But the primary one was that, try as he might, he'd been unable to revert to the "genderless" thinking pattern that had governed his relationship with Hermione since their school days.

Yes, there'd been many times during the past seven weeks when he would have sworn that they were on the verge of regaining their oh-so-easy platonic parity. But something—a fleeting exchange of looks, an accidental brushing of hands—always seemed to upset the sexual equilibrium.

For him, at least. Hermione's post-kiss state of mind was something of a mystery to him. While she _seemed_ to have put the embrace behind her, he couldn't be—

"You don't like her," Lavender said.

Harry stiffened. He looked at Lavender with her pretty raven colored hair, uncomfortably aware that he'd lost the thread of their conversation.

"I, uh, don't, uh—" He foundered, hoping Lavender hadn't sensed the direction of his thoughts.

"Cheryl," she supplied with a trace of exasperation. "I'm talking about Cheryl Ames."

Shifting his weight, Harry began surveying the throng of people gathered in the tree-shaded backyard of the Weasley's rambling home. After a few moments—moments during which he noted that Hermione still hadn't put in an appearance—he spotted the woman to whom Lavender was referring. She was an attractive brunette, a few years younger than he. She was also the daughter of Mrs. Weasley's old classmate.

No, he corrected himself, frowning slightly. The classmate's daughter was the Quidditch-playing accountant at Gringotts with whom he'd had an enjoyable dinner three weeks ago. Cheryl Ames was the niece of one of Mr. Weasley's co-workers.

"Oh, yeah," he murmured. "Right. Cheryl Ames."

"I _told_ Ron you wouldn't like her."

Harry's gaze slewed back to Lavender's face. "I never said I didn't like her," he protested. "For Pete's sake, Lavender. I just met the woman! She seems very—uh..." He paused, searching for a pleasantly noncommittal adjective. "Nice."

His choice of words garnered a groan.

"You've got a problem with 'nice'?" he countered, hoping he didn't sound as defensive as he was beginning to feel. Merlin, he hated this type of interrogation!

"Next you'll be telling me you think Cheryl has a good personality," Ron's wife predicted disgustedly.

"Well..."

Harry let his voice trail into silence, realizing that anything he said was bound to be used against him sooner or later. When Lavender made no response, he returned his attention to the buffet. Passing over a gaudy-looking gelatin-and-fruit combination, he took a dollop of potato salad. He then helped himself to a generous scoop of coleslaw.

"Maybe I should have gotten my mother-in-law to invite the woman who gave you the hickey," Lavender commented reflectively.

"What?" Harry nearly dropped his plate. He gaped at her, unable to believe he'd heard what he thought he'd just heard. A hickey? Where in heaven's name had Lavender gotten the idea that he'd been sporting a hickey? He hadn't had one of those since...since—

Oh, heck. He'd never had a hickey. He couldn't remember ever having giving one, either.

"Ron said you came into work a couple of Mondays ago with a huge suck mark on your—"

"That was an infected bug bite!" Harry cut in sharply, realizing what she must be talking about. On the first Saturday in July he'd gone rafting—an activity known as "shooting the hooch"—with a woman he'd met through one of his extra courses at the auror training. Although the outing had begun successfully enough, it had deteriorated into a near disaster.

Lavender regarded him skeptically. "Ron said it looked a lot like a hickey," she declared, her tone suggesting that her husband was an authority on the subject.

"I don't care what Ron said," Harry snapped, the skin on the left side of his neck tingling with the memory of an itch so intense that no amount of scratching had been able to relieve it. "I got chewed up by a bunch of blood-sucking bugs while I was shooting the hooch. I had welts all over my chest and back." He snorted. "I can imagine what Ron would have made of _them_. He probably would've jumped to the conclusion that I'd attended an orgy."

"Alone?"

Harry blinked at this seeming non sequitur. "Huh?"

"Did you shoot the hooch alone?"

"Oh." He grimaced. "No."

Lavender's ebony black eyebrows arched toward her hairline. "That bad, was it?"

"It could have been worse."

"Your date wasn't the woodsy type, I take it."

"She claimed she'd been a Girl Scout in America."

"But?"

"I guess she failed the merit badge test about avoiding climbing plants with shiny leaves clustered in threes when you're taking a bathroom break in the great outdoors."

Lavender looked blank for a moment. Then her eyes widened in appalled comprehension. "Are you saying your date—" she gestured delicately, "—in a patch of _poison ivy?_"

Harry nodded.

Lavender's lips started to tremble. She bit down on the lower one, obviously trying not to laugh. "That...that's t-terrible," she finally managed.

"Yeah," he agreed. As aggravating as his bug bite had been, they'd only afflicted the upper half of his body. His lady friend hadn't been so fortunate. She'd ended up itching in places she couldn't reach, much less scratch.

Or so she'd furiously informed him the day after their date when he'd called to inquire about her condition. Feeling genuinely sorry for her plight, he'd sent her a dozen roses and a handwritten letter of apology. He'd also ruled out the possibility of asking her for a second date.

He would have warned her if he'd thought she'd needed cautioning about the dangers lurking in the sylvan surroundings. But it had never occurred to him that his companion wouldn't recognize poison ivy. The woman had a Ph.D. in physics, for Merlin's sake!

"Well, I'm sorry it didn't work out," Lavender sympathized.

"Water under the bridge," Harry replied with a shrug.

His best friend's wife smiled at the word play. "The next time you shoot the hooch, you should ask Hermione."

It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion offered in a perfectly reasonable tone. Yet Harry's reaction to it was a perfectly _un_reasonable clenching of every muscle in his body.

Merlin knew, he'd thought about asking Hermione. He'd thought about it a lot. He'd even gone so far as to pick up a phone and punch in her number. But something—Cowardice? Common sense? An instinct of self-preservation?—had prompted him to drop the receiver back into it's cradle before the connection actually went through.

The hell of it was, there's been a time when he would have extended the invitation without a second thought. But ever since that damned third date kiss—

A _mistake_, he reminded himself fiercely. Kissing Hermione had been a _mistake!_

If only he could figure out how to correct it.

"Hermione's got her own life," he said, forcing himself to meet Lavender's eyes.

"A life you've always been a big part of," she acknowledged.

"That's—" he shrugged, "—Different."

"Different?" His best friend's wife's forehead furrowed. "How?"

This was not a question Harry was prepared to ask himself, much less answer for someone else.  
"Just different," he stated flatly. Then, detaching his gaze from Lavender's, he began to scan the other picnic-goers. His pulse accelerated as he caught a fleeting glimpse of a slender woman with bobbed, sable brown hair. Disappointment slowed it back down to normal when he got a clearer look at her.

Damn, he thought. Where is she?

"Have you seen Hermione?" he asked after a few moments.

"Uh...why, no."

There was an odd note in his best friend's wife's musical voice. Responding to the frisson of uneasiness it sent skittering up his spine, Harry turned back to face her.

"Hermione's not coming," Lavender told him after a brief hesitation.

Harry felt as though he'd been slugged in the solar plexus. "Not coming?"

It wasn't possible, he told himself. Hermione would no more skip the Weasley's annual picnic than he'd—

His heart lurched as an awful possibility occurred to him.

Good God. What if she hadn't shown up because of _him?_

For all that he tried to restore their relationship to an even keel during the past seven weeks, Harry knew he'd failed. When his conversations with Hermione had once been free and unfettered, he now felt compelled to test every word they exchanged for double meanings. He also found himself shying from the casual touches—from the hugs of greeting or farewell, the congratulatory pats, the teasing nudges—that had always been part of their friendship. There'd been more than a few times when he'd hesitated to make _eye_ contact with her—much less the physical kind!

While Hermione hadn't indicated any awareness of the changes in his behavior, he knew she must have noticed them. She'd put up with so much from him since Cho's death. Supposing she'd finally gotten sick and tired of coping with the problems he presented? Supposing she'd decided to start avoiding places he might be and events he might attend?

He'd phoned her at her office two—no, three—days ago. Their conversation had been brief. Accustomed as he was to Hermione's devotion to her demanding career, he hadn't thought anything of her statement that she had a million things to do and couldn't stop to chitchat. But now that he begun to replay the exchange, he couldn't help wondering...

"Hermione was here earlier this morning telling Molly that she had to floo over to Miami to straighten out some kind of emergency with one of her ad agency's biggest client," Lavender said, placing a hand on his arm. "I just assumed she'd tell you, too."

"No." Harry shook his head, trying to control the emotions roiling within him. "She never—"

"Times up, Potter," a familiar male voice interrupted. "You've monopolized my wife long enough."

"Oh, hi, sweetheart," Lavender replied, saving Harry the necessity of responding to his brother-like best friend. She turned her face up for a husbandly kiss. Ron Weasley accepted her invitation with alacrity.

"Why, Mrs. Weasley," he murmured with an exaggerated drawl when he finally lifted his mouth from his wife's. "You have got to be one of the sweetest tasting things on offer at this picnic."

"One of?" his bride of more than nine years repeated, feigning indignation. "Just _one_ of the sweetest tasting things?"

Ron slipped an arm around her waist. "You've got some pretty tough competition from my mother's shepherd pie, darling."

Lavender pretended to resist her husband's embrace for a moment, then yielded with a smile and allowed him to draw her close. Harry experienced a spasm of envy as he watched how naturally her lithe body curved to fit with Ron's taller, much more muscular one.

"Well, I guess I can live with coming in second to your mother's shepherd pie," she conceded, nestling her head against her husband's chest.

"It's almost a tie," Ron declared huskily, nuzzling her ear.

Harry fought down an urge to turn away. Except for an abiding sadness over their failure to conceive a child, Ron and Lavender had one of the most solid marriages he'd ever seen. Watching the two of them together—absorbing the lambent aura of their love—was very difficult for him. It reminded him of what he'd had. Of what he'd lost. And it hurt.

But it would have hurt less if Hermione had been there. He suddenly realized. He'd counted on seeing her today. The notion of being with her and—

The sound of Ron's baritone voice jerked him out of his reverie. "What?" he countered sharply.

Ron studied his face for a moment, then produced a half-conciliatory, half-conspiratorial smile. "I know it's none of my business, Harry," he admitted. "Still, I have to ask."

"Ron," Lavender said warningly.

Here we go again, Harry thought, bracing for the query that seemed to be one of the inevitabilities of his evolving social life.

"What do you think of Cheryl Ames?"

* * *

**A.N.- The next chapter will be about Hermione. Toodles**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything you do not recognize does belong to me.

**A.N-** I want to thank all my reviewers again. But a special message for thealphamale...Draco will be in the story, but his role is very small. He'll only be in a chapter or two. I still haven't decided. But don't worry, his part won't truly effect the relationship between Harry and Hermione.

* * *

Responding to Harry's kiss had been a mistake.

Hermione had acknowledged as much as she'd attempted--none too deftly--to fasten the locks on the inside of her front door while listening to his car pull away from the curb in front of her condomonium.

Yet eight weeks after committing the error, she was still grappling with the emotional implications of it. She was also trying to figure out why, when it came to dates, the memory of a "practice" one seemed infinitely more alluring than the possibilities offered by the real thing.

_Br-r-ring. B-r-r-_

Hermione put her wand down from cleaning and snatched up her bedside telephone. "Hello?"

"Hermione?" an immediately identifiable contralto voice inquired.

Damn, Hermione thought, then chided herself for her reaction. Hoping that this call would be from Harry had been foolish. Harry had no reason to phone her. No reason at all.

Except for twenty years of friendship.

Twenty years that seemed to be foundering on the shoals of a single, ill-considered kiss.

"Oh, hi, Ginny," she said, sinking down onto the edge of her bed.

There was a brief silence. Then, carefully, "Am I catching you at a bad time?"

"No. Of course not." Hermione's quick denial was accompanied by a prayer that her friends intuition was functioning a tad less acutely than usual. Ginevra Molly Weasley possessed an uncanny ability to read other people's feelings--the legacy, Hermione had decided, of a panpatetic upbringing by the Weasleys. If anyone was going to detect her current emotional turmoil, it was she. "It's great to hear from you."

"Are you sure?" Ginny's infliction signaled that while she'd gauged Hermione's mood and found it troubling, she was prepared to pretend everything was fine if that's what her friend wanted.

"Positive," Hermione stated, straightening her spine. She flicked a lock of hair off her cheek. "I'd much rather talk to you than clean."

"You?" The skepticism was delicate but definite. "Cleaning?"

"It's spring."

"It's already August."

"Picky, picky." Laughing wryly, Hermione relaxed into the familiar pattern of banter. To say that she and her former schoolmate had different attitudes about housekeeping was to understate the case. Wheny Ginny was an everything-in-its-place kind of person, her policy tended to be much more...um, laissez-faire.

Cho had been a lot like Ginny, she reflected suddenly. Not as relentless a tidier-upper to be sure, but still an enthusiastic devotee of the scrub brush, polishing cloth and dust mop. The home she'd created with Harry had been warm, welcoming and extremely well-tended. The first time Hermione had gone there for dinner she felt--

"Let me guess." Humor bubbled through Ginny's beautifully modulated voice. "You discovered you were being overrun by dust bunnies."

"Just because I'm not a neat freak like you doesn't mean I'm a total slob," Hermione countered, shoving her unbidden memories of Cho Liyah Potter aside. Comparing herself to Harry's late but still beloved wife was pointless. She and Cho had been very different women, with very different aspirations.

"Do you still have blue-green mold growing in your refrigerator?" Ginny inquired dulcetly.

"Do you still keep the contents of your medicine cabinet arranged in alphabetical order?"

"My place in Canterbury doesn't have a medicine cabinet."

"But if you did, you would--right?"

"Probably," Ginny acknowledged. "What can I say? I appreciate order."

"I _knew_ there had to be a logical explanation for your near engagement to that anal-retentive sexist a couple of years ago."

"Hermione!"

"Anal compulsive, then. I always get those two mixed up."

There was no immediate response.

"I suppose Talcott was a little rigid," Ginny finally conceded. "It didn't bother me at first. He seemed perfect. Everything I was looking for in a man. He was so solid. So stable. So--"

"Totally lacking in pizzazz?"

"I've had more than enough pizzazz in my life, thank you, very much." The riposte was cool and crisp.

Considering the stories about her vagabond childhood Ginny had shared over the years, Hermione decided that this anti-pizzazz sentiment was understandable. Still, she couldn't help wishing that her friend would accept the notion that being "solid and stable" didn't require a man to be as boring as a block of cement.

"What did Mrs. Ogden think of Talcott?" she asked curiously. Arietta Martel von Helsing Flynn Ogden--survivor of three wealthy and powerful husbands, former mistress of at least as many other highly eligible men, and the current doyenne of Canterbury society--was Ginny's employer. Although Ginny's job title was social secretary at the Ministry of Magic, and her responsibilities were similar to those of an executive assistant under the Minister himself, Hermione knew that the childless Arietta Ogden treated her like an honorary granddaughter.

"Mrs. Ogden said Talcott was the only man she'd ever met--aside from Calvin Coolidge--who emanated a beige aura."

Hermione chuckled.

"It was after I turned down his proposal," Ginny went on. "She was trying to convince me that I'd done the right thing."

"Did she?"

"Mmm."

Hermione interpreted this as an affirmative. "Aside from giving you personal counseling, what's the grande dame of the Luxembourg dweller been up to lately?"

"A state dinner at the Minister's house on Monday. A reception at the British Embassy on Tuesday. A gala at the Kennedy Center on Thursday," Ginny recited offhandedly. "And last night, an intimate little soiree for an old and dear friend."

"A prince?"

"A sheik."

"No beige aura there, I'll bet."

"Well, actually..."

"Yes?" Hermione prompted, intrigued by Ginny's tone.

"Even though he's eighty-two and overweight, I have to admit that Sheik Ali Kamal projects a certain, uh, pizzazz."

"Age and avoir dupois have nothing to do with pizzazz."

_And neither does the fact that a man's been your best friend for more than twenty years._

The thought insinuated itself into Hermione's consciousness with dangerous seductiveness. She pushed it away, apalled, her fingers clenching convulsively against the quilt that covered her bed. Forget it, she told herself. Just _forget it!_

She didn't want an isolated incident to shatter the relationship that was one of the conversations of her life. Yet she feared that was exactly what was going to happen unless she found a way to stop thinking about the embrace she and Harry had--

The realization that Ginny was speaking again deflected Hermione's troubled line of thought.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I, uh, missed--"

"I said, I met Luna's landlord last weekend."

It took Hermione a few moments to process this information. "You mean, Lucien Devereaux? The writer?"

"Uh-huh. He was in Canterbury doing research for his new novel."

Hermione nodded, recalling a recent visit to her favorite bookstore. Lucien Devereaux's last thriller--a runaway bestseller--had been on prominent display. The cover of the book had been compelling. Ditto the author's photograph on the back of the dust jacket.

"How does he rate in the pizzazz sweepstakes?" she asked.

"Does the phrase 'tall, dark and potentially devastating' mean anything to you?"

Hermione mulled the implications of the description. "Maybe _that's_ why Lavender seemed so shook up when she and Ron came back from visiting Kensington last year," she speculated. "I just assumed she was reacting to Luna's weird neighbors."

"You mean, the psychic psychologist?"

"To say nothing of the former pro Quidditch player turned female impersonater."

"I seem to remember Lavender mentioning someting about a three-hundred pound pastry chef who claims to be able to channel Elvis Presley, too."

"And these were just the folks in Luna's apartment building," Hermione summed up with a laugh. Then she grew thoughtful once again. "Still, if Lucien Devereaux is as hunky as you say...well, you _know_ how protective Lavender can be."

"I also know Luna is capable of taking care of herself," Ginny responded. It was an assessment with which Hermione tended to agree. Although the youngest of the Wedding Belles danced to a rather bohemian rhythm, she seldom put a foot wrong. "In any case, I got the distinct impression Mr. Devereaux thinks of himself as her honorary uncle. I seriously doubt he's put the big move on her."

Hermione flinched at her friend's choice of words.

_Shh_, Harry had whispered to her eight weeks ago as he'd cupped her chin and tilted her face up toward him. _I'm about to make my big move._

Oh, God.

"Hermione?"

She stiffened. "What?"

A sigh came through the line.

"Look," Ginny said after a moment or two. "I know something's wrong. I also know you don't want to talk about it. But it might help if you did."

Hermione gnawed her lower lip. She'd said nothing to anyone about what had passed between her and Harry. By mutual agreement, they'd kept their "practice date" arrangemet private. It wasn't that they'd been trying to hide anything. They'd simply decided that it would be wiser not to advertise--much less attempt to explain--what they were doing.

"Hermione?" her friend prompted in a quiet but determined voice.

"Have you ever felt you knew somebody inside out, then had something happen that made you look at them in an entirely different way?" she responded, opting for an oblique approach.

"I've changed my mind about people." The admission was wry. "My short-circuited relationship with Talcott Emerson the Third is certainly proof of that."

"No." Hermione shook her head. "That isn't what...I mean, I'm not--" She paused, searching for some circumlocation that would communicate the gist of her present confusion without revealing the specifics of its cause. After several increasingly frustrated seconds, she blurted the unvarnished truth. "I'm having a problem with Harry."

_"Harry?"_ Ginny's astonishment was a palpable thing. "Are you talking about Harry _Potter?_"

"Yeah."

"I can't believe it--you? Having a problem with _Harry?_ What in Merlin's name has he done?"

Hermione shifted, discomforted by Ginny's assumption that Harry, not she, was the guilty party in the current situation. "He's, uh, started dating."

"Oh." Whatever wrongdoing Ginny had been imagining, it clearly wasn't this. "So...you, uh, disapprove of the women he's going out with?"

"I don't _know_ the women he's going out with!" Hermione heard the sharpness in her tone and tried to dull it. "At least, not anymore. Harry told me about some of them in the beginning. But lately he...he hasn't..."

She stopped, struggling to maintain her equilibrium in a storm of contradictory emotions. She wasn't going to pretend that she'd enjoyed listening to Harry describe the new woman in his life, because she hadn't. In truth, it had taken considerable force of will to prevent herself from finding fault--some of it justified, a lot of it petty-minded or just plain irrational--with every female he'd mentioned.

Still, as unsettling as Harry's confidences had been, Hermione had accepted them as part of the closeness they'd always shared. And now that he'd stopped discussing all but the most innocuous of details of his revived social life with her, she couldn't help feeling rejected.

The fact that he was being far less circumspect with _other _people added to her sense of exclusion. The day after the Weasley's annual picnic, Lavender had phoned her to relate a story about Harry shooting the hooch with an unnamed woman whose outdoor skills had obviously left much to be desired. Her best friend's wife had made it clear that she'd gotten the ridiculous jumbled tale--which had included references to insect attacks, poison ivy and hickeys--from Harry himself.

Lavender had also remarked that her husband's best friend had seemed upset that she, Hermione, hadn't been able to attend the Weasley's party. Well, maybe Harry had been. Then again, maybe he hadn't. He certainly hadn't contacted her to express his disappointment at her absense!

In truth, the last contact Hermione's best friend had had with her had been a quick phone call to her office nine--no, ten days ago.

Not that she'd been keeping track. Heavens, no! She had far too many other things to think about. _Far_ too many! She had a life that was totally independent of Harry James Potter. Why this very evening, she was attending a charity fundraiser with Draco Malfoy.

Draco was an enviable escort, Hermione reminded herself firmly. One of Britian's most eligible bachelors in the wizarding world, according to some of her female aquaintences. Oh, sure, his constant use of cerosol hairspray probably had contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer. But who wasn't guilty of an occasional sin against the environment? And while their relationship could hardly be described as sizzling--indeed, after she'd deflected a pro forma pass at the end of their first date, he'd candidly admitted he'd rather have her as a sounding board than a sex partner--she still enjoyed his company.

"Are you saying Harry's stopped talking to you?" Ginny's tone suggested that if the answer was in the affirmative, she intended to check the latest weather report to find out whether hell had frozen over.

"Not--" Hermione twiddled with a lock of hair "exactly."

"Then what--exactly--is the problem? I know how worried you've been about Harry since Cho died. I should think you'd be relieved that he's finally getting out and about."

"I am," Hermione maintained. "It's just that Harry and I...we, uh, dated a few times."

"_What?_" Ginny's voice rose and split.

"It was for practice," Hermione hastened to add. "Harry decided he didn't know much about being single. I mean, he spent his entire adult life with Cho. From the first time he saw her, he was totally in love. She was his all. His everything. He never thought about another woman. He never had a chance to get into the, uh, contemporary male-female thing."

"I...see."

"It was _Harry's_ idea." It seemed vital to Hermione that she make this point very clear.

"The dating?"

"The practicing."

Ginny remained silent for several moments. "This 'practicing' you and Harry did," she finally began, plainly picking her words with great care. "I gather it didn't...ahem, work out?"

"Of course it worked out!" Hermione was stung by what her friend seemed to be suggesting.

"Then what--"

"He kissed me, Ginny."

"Harry _kissed_ you? Where? When?"

"Outside my condo. At the end of our third practice date."

"And you..."

Hermione drew a shaky breath, suddenly reliving the hot rush of yearning she'd experienced in Harry's arms. "I--I kissed him back."

"Ohmigod." Ginny might have been exultant. Then again, she might have been apalled.

Hermione squirmed, plucking at her quilted bedcover, wishing she could recall the confession she'd just made. "Look, don't try to make a big deal out of this."

"It sounds as though you've already taken care of that."

"_Ginny!_" This was not the assessment she'd wanted.

"Have you told him?"

"Have I told who what?"

"Have you told Harry you're attracted to him?"

"I never said--" Hermione nearly choked.

"You didn't have to."

"He's my best friend!"

"You'd rather be attracted to your worst enemy?"

"_I am not--_"

"Yes, you are."

Hermione said nothing. She wasn't certain she could.

"Hermione?" Ginny eventually asked.

"Still--" Hermione swallowed "--here."

"You need to tell him."

"No."

"Why not?"

It was a very good question. Hermione spent nearly a minute searching for an equally good answer.

"Supposing I said, 'Harry, I'm attracted to you.' What if he didn't say it back, Ginny? Even worse, what if I said it and he told me he _wasn't?_ Or what if...if--" She broke off, mentally replaying what she'd just said. "Oh, Merlin," she groaned, recognizing the echoes of adolescent-style angst. "I sound like a fifteen-year-old in the throes of an unrequited crush!"

Silence.

"How can you be sure it's a crush?" Ginny questioned after several moments. Her voice was gentle. "Or that it's unrequited?"

Hermione's heart turned a single, seamless somersault. Her breath seemed to clot at the top of her throat. _How could she be sure--_

Her mind fast forwarded through events of the past eight weeks. There was no disputing that Harry's manner toward her had changed in the aftermath of their kiss. But she'd interpreted this as a reaction to her own unquestionably altered behavior.

Supposing...

No, Hermione thought, her body tightening. Two people who'd shared a platonic relationship for twenty years did not suddenly discover that they had a passion for each other! What had happened between her and Harry at the end of their third practice date had been an aberration. They'd gotten carried away with the roles they'd been playing. It could have happened to anyone. It didn't _mean_ anything!

And yet...

"I can't be sure," she conceded. "But I don't want to take the risk finding out for certain would require."

"What _do _you want, then?"

Hermione sighed heavily, massaging the nape of her neck with her free hand. "I want things to be the way they were."

"And if that's not possible?"

Hermione closed her eyes, knowing that there was no _if_ about it. She couldn't turn back the clock and undo what had been done. There was no revising yesterday--much less the events of two months ago.

"In that case," she said quietly, "I'll settle for Harry being happy and for me being able to get on with my life.

* * *

**A.N- **As for my other reviewers. I'm finally going to be giving you some recognition.

atruwriter: I'm always looking forward to your reviews. You always make me feel good writing this story because I know that you enjoy it so much.

Moyo: Thank you so much and I'm glad you enjoy it.

elfgirl: Thank you and I'll update more often.

softballcutie: I look forward to reading your messages. I know I suck at updates, but don't I make it up to you.

Michelle: Thank you so much. Keep reading, more will come.

Korval: Thanks.

Lang: Thank you. More will come.

Irishlassie101: I'm glad you enjoy it.

Rae: Thanks for your review.

mysticpammy: Thank you so much.

Rowan: Thank you.

Junsui: I love how she is too. I want it to feel more realistic instead of just throwing them both in there and not truly understanding the point.

Lola: Thanks.

CorruptedSanctuary: I loved your review. It made me real happy to know that you're enjoying my story. I try really hard to please my readers and myself. I enjoy what I do and it thrills me to know that I'm doing a good job in doing so for you guys too. Thank you.

Mekohi: I will, thanks.

coolcatmatt: I hope you don't rip your hair out, here's the next chapter lol.

LemonDropAnyone: Thanks for your review. I'll update quick.

icygaze52: Nice to see your back. Thanks for your review.

peachie1st: I will.

SleepDeprived07: Thanks for your review. I really enjoyed it. As for the Grey's Anatomy similarity...it wasn't actually. I don't watch the show. I hardly have time to watch television as it is. Nothing against it, it's just I don't watch tv. It's cool that they had something to do with it though, huh?


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N.-** Uhh...yah. I just want to thank all my reviewers. You guys are so great. You're awesome! You're wonderful! You're...well, I s'pose you get the idea now, right? On with the story now!

* * *

Chapter Eight:

Harry James Potter wasn't happy.

No matter that the fundraiser he was attending was for a very worthy cause and that the guests with whom he was mingling included some of England's top movers and shakers.

No matter that his date for the evening was the abundantly appealing Belinda "Honey Chile" Reese.

No matter that—

Harry froze in the act of lifting the wineglass he'd snagged from a passing waiter to his lips. His gaze locked onto a couple who'd just strolled into the cream-and-gold ballroom of one of London's premiere hotels.

It was Hermione.

_His_ Hermione…and that damned Draco Malfoy.

The two of them. Together. Performing the meet-and-greet routine like a pair of perfectly matched professionals.

_Exhale,_ his brain instructed him trenchantly.

Harry released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He took a gulp of wine. The alcohol burned across his tongue and down his throat like acid.

No, not "his" Hermione, he corrected himself with an uncharacteristic surge of bitterness. The woman with Draco Malfoy wasn't the Hermione he knew.

She'd done something different with her hair. In place of the smooth, chin-length bob he was used to, there was a tousled froth of curls.

She'd done something different with her make-up, as well. Different as far as he was concerned, at least. Maybe her concrete-coiffed escort was accustomed to a Hermione Jane Granger who emphasized the flirtatious sweep of her lashes and the provocative fullness of her mouth. He certainly wasn't!

And then there was the dress she was wearing. Short, scoop-necked and sleeveless, it looked a lot like expensive lingerie. The fabric it was made of seemed to be basic brown silk. Until Hermione moved, that is. Then the garment began to shimmer with a subtle copper sheen.

Harry took another deep drink of wine. He knew he should look away. He also knew he couldn't. Not yet.

_Not._

He assessed the gentle swell of Hermione's breasts against the bodice of her dress…

_Quite._

The languid sway of her hips beneath the petal-hemmed skirt…

_Yet._

The sleek movement of her long, sheerly stockinged legs…

Harry drained the last mouthful of his wine, fighting down an urge to toss the emptied glass aside. The need to smash something—anything!—was strong.

He'd seen Hermione with men before, he reminded himself. Not all that many men, to be sure. And not all that many times. But a sufficient number on enough occasions so that there was no rational reason why the sight of her keeping company with Draco Malfoy should affect him so deeply.

There was an irrational reason for his reaction, of course. The men with who he'd seen Hermione—including the nice-guy jock who'd taken her to their graduation dance, the preppie who—Harry was ninety-nine percent certain—had taken her virginity, and the transplanted New York architect who had taken her to the Caribbean three years ago—had been apart of her life while Cho had been a part of his. More to the point, they'd been part of her life before he and she had shared a kiss that had blown his assumption about their relationship to smithereens.

Harry went rigid, his fingers tightening on the slender stem of his wineglass. What the—

God. Now Malfoy was touching her! The bastard had just slid a hand down her spine and let it come to rest on the curve of her bottom!

Even at a distance, the possessiveness of the gesture was unmistakable. What was equally unmistakable—but infinitely more galling—was Hermione's acceptance of it.

No, Harry told himself with an inexplicable sense of having been betrayed. She definitely wasn't "his" Hermione tonight. His Hermione was an independent, stand-on-her-own lady who'd never allow some hotshot to stake a public claim on her backside!

"Harry, darling, are you alright?"

The source of this sudden inquiry and the tactile demand for attention that accompanied it was his date.

"What?" he responded blankly, trying to focus on Honey Chile Reese's exquisite face. There was a flush on her cheeks that instinct told him had nothing to do with cosmetics.

"I asked if you were all right." She stroked his jacket with peony pink nails.

"I'm fine." He disciplined himself not to step away from Honey Chile or glance back toward Hermione. "What makes you think I might not be?"

Perfectly penciled eyebrows arched upward. "Let's just say I've stirred up more interest in half-dead _blind_ men than I seem to be arousing in _you_ this evening."

The tone was half-syrup, half-steel. Harry experienced a pang of remorse, acknowledging his companion's right to reproach him.

He'd accepted Belinda Reese's unexpected invitation to this event of his own free will and for less than pristine purposes. Why she'd asked him to be her escort he couldn't begin to guess, although he'd gotten the distinct impression that he wasn't her first choice for the job. Why he'd overridden his initial impulse to plead a previous engagement and agreed to her request was simple. He'd desperately wanted a distraction and Honey Chile had seemed like the best bet around.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment.

"I don't want your apology," Honey Chile replied throatily, edging further into his personal space. She tossed her mane of champagne-colored hair and turned on a practical smile. Harry decided the expression would have been more seductive if the glistening white teeth she revealed hadn't been clenched. A little less desperation in her artfully made-up eyes would have helped the cause, too. "I want your undivided attention."

* * *

Hermione was rapidly becoming convinced that she'd overdone her determination to get on with her life.

"Stop it, Draco," she snapped, whisking her escort's hand off her derriere. She'd endured the contact during the few seconds it took to exchange pleasantries with the chairman of London's Olympic planning committee. But now that the distinguished-looking official had moved out of earshot, the time for tolerance was over.

"I can't help myself, Hermione," Draco responded in a mellifluous, made-to-be-miked undertone. "You look really hot tonight."

"Don't let the new packaging fool you," she advised acidly, adjusting the neckline of her dress. "Inside, it's still the same old me."

"No." He shook his head without stirring a hair. "You're differ--" He broke off, focusing on something behind her. His eyes narrowed speculatively. "Now _that's_ interesting."

Under normal circumstances, Hermione probably would have resented losing her escort's attention so precipitously. But these were not normal circumstances. And far from resenting Draco's abrupt shifting of emotional gears, she actually felt relieved by it. Better he should be chasing after some gossip than chasing after her!

"A scandal in the making?" she inquired, turning to discover what was so intriguing. She scanned the gathered crowd curiously. There were plenty of well-known faces, but nothing out of place, as far as she could—

Hermione went very still.

There, on the other side of the room.

It was Harry.

_Her_ Harry…and Belinda "Honey Chile" Reese.

Standing close. Obviously coupled. Practically joined at the hip!

A lump the size of a cantaloupe seemed to form in Hermione's throat. She swallowed hard several times.

She tried to avert her gaze.

She failed.

How can he let her touch him like that? Hermione wondered, watching Honey Chile run her fingers up and down the front of Harry's well-tailored, navy suit jacket. She's acting as though she owns him! Doesn't he realize—

No. Apparently not.

Then again, maybe he did but he didn't mind. Maybe her best friend _enjoyed_ being buttered like a piece of toast!

Maybe he enjoyed the opportunity to drool down Honey Chile's gravity-defying décolletage, too.

Hermione stiffened suddenly, still staring across the ballroom. Surely Honey Chile wasn't going to resort to _that_ old trick, she thought disbelievingly.

Oh, Merlin. She was! The ex-beauty queen was actually trotting out the clichéd fluff-the-hair-and-flash-the-teeth routine! And Harry was reacting to the play as though—

"_What_ did you say?" Hermione demanded sharply, her eyes slewing back to her escort. As incredible as it sounded, she would have sworn she'd just heard Draco mention something about Belinda Reese being involved with an up-and-coming member of the Royal Court of Wales.

"There was a rumor that Judge Emerson might use this event to go public with his relationship with England's favorite platinum-haired peach," Draco informed her, clearly relishing the opportunity to dish a little inside dirt.

"Judge…_Emerson?_" Hermione flashed back to the conversation she'd had with Ginny. "Are you talking about Talcott Emerson the Third? _That_ Judge Emerson?"

"Hard to believe, huh?" Draco displayed a set of flawlessly capped teeth. "I mean, T.E. Three's a total stiff and Honey Chile's a—well, uh, let's just say the much-married Ms. Reese isn't likely to win many votes from the 'family values' crowd the man's been trying to cultivate. One of her doting ex-husbands—number two, I think, he's a major campaign contributor—apparently introduced them at some political fundraiser about six weeks back and ka-bloom. Hormonal overdrive on both sides. I hear Emerson's handlers are fit to be tied, what with their positioning him for the senate bid. They thought he had the perfect political wife picked out a couple of years ago. Some woman named Weasley." He looked pointedly at her, as if showing that he knew everything about everything. "Well heeled, well connected and well behaved. The kind of lady he could take anywhere, including home to meet that steel magnolia mother of his. But something went wrong."

Hermione resisted the temptation to comment that the validity of the last assessment depended on one's point of view. From her perspective, Ginny Weasley's evasion of the strait-jacketed life of a "perfect political wife" meant that something had gone very, very right.

"And now the judge's dating _Honey Chile Reese?_" she asked.

"Only behind closed doors," Draco stressed. "No one's been able to get any concrete proof. Like I said, there was a rumor Emerson might go on the record—so to speak—this evening. I guess he wimped out. Which is no big surprise, really. Everybody knows the guy's shorts are stiffer than his spine."

Hermione's gaze strayed back to the other side of the ballroom. She didn't know what to think. What to feel.

She didn't want Harry to get hurt. And if he discovered that Belinda Reese was using him—which given the circumstances, she plainly was—he would be.

On the other hand, she didn't want him _not _to realize what Honey Chile was up to. Although he wasn't naïve, Harry was a genuinely trusting man. The notion of him being sucked in…seduced…

Hermione clenched her hands.

God, it made her so angry! She'd _warned _Harry about that bleached-blond bimbo. But had he paid any heed? Obviously not! Maybe he deserved to—

"You know him, don't you?" Draco said suddenly.

Her first impulse was to lie. But the impulse gave way to realization that Draco would know she was because—even though it had been years since he and Harry had come face-to-face of each other—he would recognize Harry in a heartbeat. "Yes," she affirmed after a second or two. "I know him."

"He seems vaguely familiar to me." He was teasing and Hermione knew he was.

She hesitated, gauging the implications of this remark. That Draco was angling for information was obvious. Whether the bait he was using was legitimate was open to question. She gritted her teeth. "His name is Potter," she said carefully. "You know, Harry Potter?"

Draco repaid her with a smug look. "I _knew _it was him." He paused, his gaze bouncing from Hermione to the other side of the ballroom and back again. "Are you and he—"

"_No!_"

"No?" Draco tilted his well-groomed head to one side. His expression made it clear to Hermione that the question she'd just so vehemently denied was not the one he'd intended to ask.

"No," she repeated, berating herself for assuming that he'd assumed that she and Harry were, uh…whatever. "Harry Potter and I have been friends for the longest time. You know that. We grew up together. There's nothing—I mean, he and I—well, we're like…like…"

"Brother and sister?" Draco suggested, a suspicious glint in his eyes.

_Oh, God_, Hermione thought miserably.

"Exactly," she agreed aloud.

Whether Draco believed her assertion about her pseudo sibling relationship with Harry was something Hermione never found out. Still, he acted as though he did, and that was all that mattered.

Whether he believed her claim—made less than an hour after their arrival at the fundraiser—that she'd developed a migraine was something else she never learned.

Since he agreed to take her home as soon as she asked him to, that didn't matter much, either.

* * *

"Now I truly _do_ have a headache." Honey Chile Reese snuffled, dobbing at her face with a dainty lace-trimmed handkerchief.

"I'm sorry," Harry responded. They were sitting in his car, which was parked in the driveway of his tear-stained passenger's two-story town house. He wondered how long it was going to take to get Honey Chile out of his automobile and into her anything-but-humble abode.

"Getting emotionally overwrought always does this to me."

What was he supposed to say? That after listening to her semi coherent confession, his temples were pounding as well?

Although Harry was fuzzy about many of the details—small wonder, considering they'd been sobbed into the front of his shirt—he was pretty sure he understood the basic outline of Belinda Reese's sad story.

To wit: after a lifetime of flitting from man to man like a heartless butterfly—her phrase, not his—Honey Chile had tumbled into true love with Judge Talcott Emerson the Third. The judge, who'd always struck Harry as being blander than white bread, apparently had been ensnared by emotion, as well. Unfortunately the burden of civic responsibilities—a bunch of people steering him toward the British Royal Court—made it difficult for him to go public with his passion. Weary of sneaking around, Honey Chile had decided to salve her wounded feminine pride—again, her words—by going out with other men.

But only _nice_ men, she'd emphasized, fluttering moisture-spangled lashes and stretching the adjective out like an elastic band.

Honey Chile wielded her lace-trimmed handkerchief again. She cried very prettily, Harry noted. Cho had had a similar knack. Not that she'd ever employed it as manipulatively as he suspected Honey Chile did. Still, he knew his late wife had been aware that she had a certain talent for tears.

Unlike Hermione. Merlin! When he thought about the way she'd looked on the rare occasions he'd seen her—

Harry halted this ill-considered detour down memory lane. Images of his best friend weeping—her eyes swollen, her nose running, and her complexion blotchy—were to last thing he needed cluttering his brain.

She was off somewhere with Draco Malfoy at this very moment, he reminded himself. He'd seen his former practice date and her helmet-haired escort exit the fundraiser shortly before Honey Chile had declared she'd had a headache and needed to go home. They'd appeared to be in quite a hurry. Given the grab-and-grope routine he'd observed when they'd come into the ballroom, the reason for their haste seemed pretty obvious.

Damn her! And damn himself for being—

"Can you _ever_ forgive me?"

Honey Chile's plaintive inquiry jolted Harry back into the present.

"There's nothing to forgive," he said flatly.

"But the way I've _behaved!_ Acting like I wanted to be with you when all the time I was yearning for Talcott."

"You weren't the only one at fault tonight, Honey Chile."

"I—" a delicate sniffle, "—don't—" a slight narrowing to the eyes, "—understand."

Forking his fingers back through his hair, Harry considered replying that he didn't understand, either. But he realized this would e a lie. He'd understood—not completely, but pretty close—for the better part of two months. He simply hadn't been willing to face up to it until this evening.

"Let's just say I've spent too much time trying to substitute a lot of different women for the one I really want," he finally replied.

There was a silence. Harry got the distinct impression that Honey Chile was revising a host of assumptions. Her entire demeanor seemed to change. "Oh, sugar." She leaned forward and patted his arm. Her touch was compassionate but impersonal. "Is this about losing your wife? Are you still missing her?"

A wave of sorrow washed over Harry, and then receded. In its wake came another emotion. Although nascent and still nebulous, it was as potent as any he'd ever known.

He drew a deep breath, like a diver preparing to take a plunge. "Yes, I still miss Cho," he answered. "But this isn't about her. It's about Hermione Granger."

Honey Chile withdrew her hand and sat back, regarding him without speaking for what seemed to Harry like a very long time.

"Well, if that's the case," she eventually said, her voice as tart as a slice of lemon. "What in blazes are you doing here with _me?_"

* * *

**A.N-** I just hoped you enjoyed this chapter...I was sort of kind of uninspired during the writing of it, so if it doesn't make sense...you're not alone! I had no idea what was going on either...haha fooled ya! Anyways, the story will really start picking up from here now.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:**I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N:** I just want to thank all my reviewers for their comments. I was touched by your messages and I really appreciate all the fact that you truly enjoy me story. That really makes me feel as if I'm doing something right. Well...onto the story...

* * *

"Do you have any idea what time it is, Harry?"

"Eight weeks after," came the infuriatingly obscure response. "But not too late."

"_Excuse me?_"

The headache Hermione had claimed to have earlier in the evening was rapidly becoming a reality. She'd been thirty seconds away from crawling into bed when her front door bell had rung. Heart pounding, she'd answered the ding-donging summons.

"Who is it?" she'd demanded through the door.

"It's me, Hermione," a familiar male voice had answered. "We need to talk. Please. Let me in."

She had. After undoing the various locks, smoothing her shower-dampened hair and squaring her shoulders, she'd opened the door and allowed Harry James Potter into her house.

And what did she get in return? Some mumbo-jumbo muttering about it being "eight weeks after".

Eight weeks after _what?_ she wondered, trailing after Harry as he strode, without permission, into her living room. The only thing that happened eight weeks ago was--

Hermione halted in midstep, her fingers spasming in the folds of the terry-cloth robe she'd thrown on over her skimpy nightdress before she'd gone to answer the door. No, she thought. Oh, no. He couldn't be talking about _that!_

Not now. Not tonight.

"Is he here?" Harry demanded, pivoting to face her. There was an expression in his green eyes Hermione had never seen before. It did peculiar things to her pulse and breathing pattern.

"Wh-who?" she stammered.

"Malfoy."

"Why would you think--"

"I saw you with him at tonight's literacy fund-raiser, Hermione."

She hadn't realized Harry had spotted her in the crowd. The fact that he'd noted her presense but hadn't approached her seemed to underscore the gulf that had opened between them. Of course, she was guilty of the same sin of omission. But that was...well, it was...uh...

"I saw you, too," she'd admitted stiffly. "You were with--" She stopped, suddenly focusing on the front of her visitor's shirt. It was badly rumpled, partially unbuttoned, and mottled with pinky, white splotches and black-brown smudges. "Is that _makeup?_"

Clearly startled by this abrupt question, Harry glanced down at himself. "Uh, yeah," he replied after a moment. "I guess it is."

Hermione opened and shut her mouth several times, feeling like a fish gasping for oxygen. Indignition--and another emotion she wasn't prepared to name--exploded within her.

"You show up at my house, uninvited, at eleven-thirty at night, smeared with Belinda Reese's makeup," she exclaimed, "and you have the _nerve_ to ask whether I've got Malfoy stashed away someplace?"

"It's not the way it looks," Harry countered, gesturing. "Honey Chile got a little weepy when I took her home this evening."

"So you calmed her down by letting her dry her eyes on your chest?"

"My shirt and tie, not my chest." There was a hint of exasperatioin in the correction. "And it wasn't a question of 'letting.' She flung herself on me and I couldn't very well shove her off. She's having personal problems."

"So I hear."

"Who--" Harry broke off, grimacing. "Oh. _Malfoy._"

Not inclined to confirm or deny the source of her information, Hermione sniped, "Belinda Reese and Talcott Emerson the Third. Talk about politics making strange bedfellows!"

"Honey Chile's not as bad as you think, Hermione."

"Oh--" she gave a sardonic little sniff "--I'm sure she's better than I could possibly imagine!"

There was a long pause. Then, "Jealous?" Harry suggested softly.

"_Jealous?_" Her voice soared on the first syllable, shredded on the second.

"Yeah."

"No!"

Her vehement denial didn't seem to faze Harry at all. "Too bad," he commented after a moment or two. His voice was still soft, almost reflective. A wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Because I sure was."

Hermione's lungs emptied. "You...were?"

He nodded.

There was another long pause.

"It isn't working, you know," Harry eventually said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rocking back on his heels.

Hermione blinked, completely confused. "What isn't working?"

"My dating."

She heard an odd little laugh. A moment later she realized it had come from her. The realization did nothing to restore her emotional equilibrium.

"You've got to give it some time, Harry," she advised, striving for a reasonable tone. "After all, you've only been going out for two months. I mean--well, look at me! I've been dating for _years_ and I still haven't got it right."

He nailed her with a look. "Have you really wanted to, Hermione?"

"I-I beg your pardon?"

"Have you _really_ wanted to 'get it right'?"

Hermione's chest tightened. Averting her gaze, she started to fiddle with the tie belt of her bathrobe. "Of course I have."

"And what does 'getting it right' mean to you?"

"Uh, well..."

"For most people," Harry said slowly, answering his own question. "'Getting it right' means finding someone they can care about. Someone who'll care back. Someone they can be with, long term. Maybe even marry. But that's never been on your agenda, has it?"

Brown eyes collided with green ones. Hermione discovered she was trembling. "Harry--"

"Did you ever play Wedding when you were growing up?"

Had she ever played--What in Heaven's name did that have to do with anything?

"I played with _you_ when I was growing up," Hermione observed pointedly, hating the defensiveness she heard in her voice. She had absolutely nothing to feel defensive about. Her life was hers to live as she chose. She wasn't required to explain her choices to anyone. "Except it was more like getting into trouble than playing."

Harry smiled fleetingly. "Cho told me she used to parade around her house with a lace-trimmed slip pinned to her head, singing 'Here Comes the Bride'."

Something inside Hermione went cold. Cho, she thought, biting the inside of her cheek. It always comes back to Cho, doesn't it?  
"I wasn't being critical," Harry said, obviously misinterpreting her response.

"Well, thanks for that!" she snapped. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your assuring me that you didn't drop by to trash my social life. Especially since _you're_ the one who asked _me_ to help you with _yours!_"

"Hermione--"

Time's up, Hermione decided. She'd had enough of her best friend. More than enough.

"I think you should leave now, Harry."

He stiffened, clearly surprised. Then he shook his head. "I can't."

"Sure you can." Turning away, she pointed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she acknowledged that the gesture would have been more authorative if her hand hadn't been shaking. "The door's that way."

Harry caught her by the shoulder and forced her to face him again. "There's something I need to say to you, Hermione."

It was the first time he'd touched her since he'd arrived at the condo. Hermione felt the contact clear down to the soles of her feet. Flushing, she jerked herself free of his fingers and took a quick step backward. Her heart was thumping, her pulse throbbing.

"So say it and go away," she told him.

Harry took a deep breath, then expelled it in a slow, steady stream.

"I've discovered that dating is a form of...searching," he began. "The problem is, you don't always know what, or who, you're trying to find. And when that's the case, you date and date and nothing--nobody--seems to click. _You can't get it right._ And you can't figure out why." He spread his hands, palms up. "Take me, for instance. I've gone out with quite a few women during the last eight weeks. Attractive women. Intelligent women. Women I've enjoyed being--"

"I don't...need...to hear...this," Hermione declared through gritted teeth.

"Okay," Harry acquiesced, a hint of huskiness entering his voice. Emotion shimmered in the depths of his eyes the way heat shimmers above a highway on a scorching summer day. "The point is, there's been a lot to like about the women I've dated. But even though I've known that with my head, I haven't felt it in my heart. None of them really interested me. And tonight, I finally faced up to why."

Hermione looked away. She knew. She knew with absolute certainty what he was about to say. Something impelled her to say it first.

"You wanted them to be Cho," she whispered.

There was a shocked silence. Then, for the second time in as many months, Harry James Potter rocked Hermione Jane Granger's life to the core.

"No, Hermione," he contradicted with devastating simplicity. "I wanted them to be you."

* * *

**A.N:** I just want to personally thank my reviewers.

**atruwriter:** I know...it sucks for all the suspense and the drama these two are putting themselves through. But don't worry. Something good is coming for the both of them.

**rituel:** I am truly thankful for your review. It made me feel really good about my writing skills. That's wonderful that someone actually looks into it that deeply haha. As for your idea about conflicts between the two...oh, they'll have their fair share of conflicts.

**whatareevensaying:** Well, I'm very glad you were able to hold your anger in while Malfoy made his appearance. But don't worry, I'm not really sure if he'll be making any more appearances in this story. I'm don't know.

**mysticpammy:** Thanks for your review. I really appreciate it.

**peachie1st:** I will. No worries there.

**Moyo:** Oh you're not rude at all. You'll get more sooner from now on.

**NikkyB:** Thank you for your review and don't worry. I'll be updating way faster now.

**SleepDeprived07: **I really think it's cute, too, that Harry and Hermione are still totally oblivious to each other's feelings for one another. The part I really enjoyed writingwas the part where Hermione and Draco were having their conversation about Harry. I don't know...it just seemed sort of sneaky a bit.

**Junsui:** Oh I was only joking about the part where I felt uninspired in writing the chapter haha. But yeah...I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I think their feelings are now up in the air between the two. Time only tells when they'll finally look up and realize it.

**Corrupted Sanctuary: **I think Draco and Hermione are very sexy together. I'm considering another story to do with the two of them soon. But I'm not quite sure yet. But anyways. Back to the couple at hand. I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I had a hard time of writing it. I'll be updating more often now.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N:** I was just feeling a little nice today, so I decided to update a chapter. Hope you all enjoy!

* * *

"I never came close to fainting."

Harry suppressed a smile, watching Hermione from beneath partially lowered eyelids. He was sprawled on a blanket spread on the grossy banks of the river they were occupying. She was kneeling a foot or two away from him, searching through the contents of a nylon knapsack.

Despite her contentious tone, Hermione looked radiantly relaxed. Hours of rafting beneath an August sun had given her skin an apricot glow and added scattered glints of bronze to her wind-ruffled hair. While her attire--an oversize work shirt, trim denim shorts and ancient canvas sneakers--wouldn't win any fashion awards, it suited her tomboyish litheness perfectly.

"You simply had an irresistable urge to collapse onto the nearest sofa and put your head between your knees, hmm?" Harry queried mildly, scratching his chest. He wondered, not for the first time, whether his companion was wearing a bra. The loose fit of her pale blue top made it impossible to be sure. But every once in a while, a breeze molded the wash-faded garment against her upper body in a way that suggested there was little, if anything, between it and naked skin.

"_You_ were the one who forced my head down," Hermione reminded him, pulling a bottle of sunscreen from the knapsack and setting it next to her. "I'm surprised I didn't need a chiropractic adjustment after you got through with me."

"Sorry," Harry returned, unrepentant. He shooed a pair of flies away from his nose with a lazy wave of his right hand. "I guess I overreacted to seeing your face go white and your eyes roll up. Next time I'll just let you keel over."

"There isn't going to be a next time."

"Then you admit you almost passed out."

The assertion earned him a sharp, sideward glance. "I admit nothing. Ever."

Harry released the grin he'd been holding back. For three weeks, Hermione and he had been bickering about her response to his confession that she was his dating ideal. Although he recognized he was using the snappy give-and-take as a means of buffering himself against the full implications of his admission, he still found the exchanges exhilirating. He suspected his partner in repartee felt much the same way.

The dispute over her near-swoon aside, there was no doubt that Hermione had been stunned when he'd revealed the emotional reality he'd finally faced up to after seeing her with Draco Malfoy. That she'd very much wanted to believe what he was telling her had been obvious to him. He'd seen it shining in her eyes. He'd heard it singing in her voice.

That she'd been wary--even afraid--of believing what he was telling her had been obvious, as well.

"It goes back to what I said before, Harry," she'd declared earnestly, her face still paler than normal. "You have to give this some time. These women you've been going out with are...are...well, they're _new_ to you. You're not used to them. But I'm familiar, you know? I mean, we've been close for two decades. So what you think you're feeling toward me--" she gestured "--may be the result of our being comfortable with each other.

"_Comfortable?_" he'd repeated, sitting down next to her. "Hermione, if 'comfortable' is how I've felt around you during the last two months, God save me from ever feeling awkward or uneasy. I don't think I could survive the experience. More to the point, I don't think I'd want to."

Hermione's expression had changed then, with wonder beginning to win out over wariness. A hint of color had returned to her cheeks. Her lips had parted. After a moment she'd veiled her eyes with her lashes as though sensing how revealing the look in them must be.

"I thought it was just me," she'd said, as much to herself as to him. "When you started acting differently toward me after we kissed, I thought it was because I was being, uh, well..." She'd gestured as she had before, her slender hands trembling ever so slightly. "_You know._"

"Oh, yes," he'd affirmed feelingly. The need to touch her had welled up inside him. He'd succumbed to it after a brief struggle. Shifting his weight, he'd slipped an arm around her. She'd resisted for the space of a heartbeat, then melted into his embrace. "I very definitely know."

Except for a tender kiss exchanged on the threshold of Hermione's front door many hours later, that cuddling had been as intimate as their physical contact had gotten that night.

This wasn't to say that Harry hadn't wanted to make love with Hermione. He had. Desperately. His body thrilled in response to her nearness. His brain had flooded with a rush of erotic images. Yet something deep within him had made him hold back.

Something deep within him was _still_ making him hold back.

Harry had thought a great deal about exactly what this "something" might be during the last twenty-one days. He'd come to the conclusion his reticence was rooted in a sense that there was no question of _if_ Hermione and he would become lovers, only a question of _when_. The conviction that desire deferred was not the same as desire denied seemed to have imbued him with the patience to savor the unique pleasures of each incremental move toward passion's ultimate destination.

But there was another element to his holding back--an element that had cost him a great deal in masculine pride to acknowledge. It was an element he doubted he would ever be able to admit to anyone, including Hermione.

To put it bluntly, he was insecure about comparisons she might make once they finally make love.

He'd only slept with one woman in his life. And while he and Cho had found great happiness in each other's arms, their union had been more a matter of sweet completion than shattering climax. He couldn't help wondering whether Hermione might find him wanting in terms of--

"What's that?" he questioned suddenly, propping himself upon one elbow. He was more than willing to have his previous train of thought diverted onto a less disturbing track.

"This?" Hermione uncapped the spray can she'd just taken out of the knapsack. Aiming the container in his direction, she pumped its nozzle several times. "Guess."

Harry took a whiff and grimaced. _Ughh._ The stuff stank, pure and simple. No wonder the can's label bore what looked like a skull and crossbones!

"Whatever it is," he declared, "it ought to be banned under the Geneva Convention against gas warfare."

"It's insect repellent," she informed him with a laugh, snapping the cap back into place and returning the can to the knapsack. Her lips curved into a mishchevious smile. "I heard you had a little problem with mosquitoes the last time you took a lady friend shooting the hooch."

The tone of this comment was so blandly offhand that it took Harry a moment to absorb the implications of what had been said.

"How did--" he started to ask, then broke off as he realized what the answer to his inquiry had to be. He levered himself into a sitting position. "Lavender's been talking, I take it."

Hermione picked up the bottle of sunscreen and opened it. "She mentioned something a while back about bloodsucking bugs, poison ivy and, er, hickeys."

"You can thank our good friend, Ron, for that last bit."

"You, Ron, and _hickeys?_" Hermione eyed him quizzickly, her brows lifted. "I think I may have underestimated the kinkiness of your relationship with Ron, Harry."

"Oh, yeah." A rueful chuckle. "Right."

There was a pause. A gentle breeze rustled the lush green foliage of the nearby trees. Overhead, a raucous pair of blackbirds traced circles against the cloudless blue sky. A group of adolescent rafters floated by, calling out an unintelligable but unmistakably friendly greeting as they passed.

Harry watched as Hermione rubbed her lightly tanned arms and legs with protective lotion. While her movements were easy and economical, he thought he detected a hint of self-consciousness about them. She _knew_ she had his attention, he decided, and she was enjoying it.

His breath caught in his throat as she began to undo the top buttons of her work shirt. "Can I help?" he asked after a moment. The offer netted him a smile. It wasn't flirtatious. Just intensely feminine.

Harry felt the muscles of his lower body contract. Sweet heaven, he thought. How could he ever have categorized this woman as "genderless"?

"Thanks." Hermione extended the bottle of sunscreen. She shrugged the work shirt off her shoulders. "You can do the upper part of my back."

Harry smoothed the lotion on with slow, careful strokes. Hermione's skin was warm and soft beneath his fingers. She sighed at one point, her head dipping toward her chest. Her glossy brown hair parted on either side of her neck, swinging forward to reveal the vulnerable curve of her nape.

"Have you told anyone about us?" he eventually asked. Although he and Hermione hadn't spent the last three weeks skulking around in back alleys, they really hadn't gone public with their decision to start dating "for real", either. It wasn't a subject they'd sat down and discussed. It had just worked out that way. And all things considered, Harry was glad it had. For all its intensity, what was happening between him and Hermione was still new--still very fragile. It needed to be carefully nurtured.

He wondered fleetingly what their friends and families would say if they learned what was going on.

Hermione shifted resistively. Harry strongly suspected that she, too, was speculating about other people's responses to their burgeoning relationship.

"Not exactly," she replied after a brief hesitation.

His hands stilled for a moment. "What exactly does 'not exactly' mean?"

"I, uh, mentioned our practice dating to Ginny."

"I see."

"I...I told her you'd kissed me."

Harry began stroking her shoulders again. "Nothing about your kissing me back?"

"That, too."

"Ah."

There was a short silence.

"Do you think I should?" Hermione finally inquired.

"Do I think you should what?"

"Tell people about us."

Harry massaged the nerve-rich spot at the top of Hermione's spine with the balls of his thumbs. "I suppose that would depend on what you wanted to tell."

"Hunh." The inarticulate response suggested that the issue of what she wanted to "tell" was very much unresolved. "Have you?"

"Told anyone?"

"Uh-huh?"

"No." He slid his hands up and over Hermione's shoulders, palms curving, fingers splayed. He felt a new kind of tension seep into her muscles.

"Do you want to?"

"Not really." He eased his hands forward a few inches, his fingertips coming to rest on either side of the hollow at the base of her throat. The throb of her pulse was a provocation. So was the sudden hitch in her breathing. "Do you?"

"No." Hermione twisted around to look at him. There was a soft flush of color in her cheeks.

"Not enough to tell, hmm?" he asked, conscious that the previously snug fit of the chopped-off jeans he had on was beginning to feel uncomfortably tight.

"Not...yet."

Harry read promises in Hermione's dark eyes when she said this.

He tasted more of the same on her trembling lips when he tilted her chin up and kissed her.

* * *

Ten days later. 

To Hermione's intense disappoinment, a torrential downpour had washed out her plans to take Harry to the second game of a doubleheader between the Canons and the Wrangliers. After consulting the newspaper and determining that there was nothing at the movies they particularly wanted to see, they'd opted for a quiet evening of TV viewing.

The venue for this viewing was Harry's one-bedroom apartment in midtown London. He'd moved into the place, which was located in a building overlooking St. James Park, about nine months ago.

Hermione's first impression of the rental unit had been that it's spartan simplicity was very different from the English Country coziness of the house that Harry had shared with Cho during their marriage. She'd experienced a curious sense of relief because of this. A sense that maybe, just maybe, her grieving friend was beginning to look ahead instead of back.

But then she'd spent some time in the apartment. Her hopeful assessment of Harry's state of mind had yielded to the unsettling recognition that his hold on the past--and the past's hold on him--was still very strong.

Her evidence?

A silver-framed photograph that had been taken on a blissfully happy wedding day.

An exquisite piece of coral that had been brought back as a memento of an apparently perfect honeymoon.

A slim, leather-bound volume of inspirational poetry that had been a gift from a heartsick husband to a dying wife.

And so on...

And so on...

Hermione's sensitivity to Cho's presense in Harry's ostensibly bachelor apartment had become increasingly acute during the past month. Because of this, she'd considered suggesting that they do their TV watching at her place rather than his. However, the memory of unwashed dishes sitting in the sink and unread newspapers piling on the floor--to say nothing of the realization that she couldn't recall how much lingerie she'd left hanging in her bathroom, or whether she'd had time to make her bed that morning--had prompted her to reject the notion.

It wasn't that she was hiding anything from Harry, she'd assured herself. He was well aware of her deficiencies as a housekeeper. Nonetheless, she found herself relunctant to expose him to the two weeks' worth of dust she'd allowed to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of her home.

"_Top Hat_--again?"

Hermione looked away from the TV screen--where a debonaire Fred Astaire was melodiously informing a jodpur-clad Ginger Rogers that it was a lovely day to be caught in the rain--and up at Harry. Setting down the remote control device she'd been toying with, she accepted the popcorn-heaped wooden bowl he was holding out to her.

"I was channel surfing and discovered it was on," she explained, scooting over to make room for him on the low-slung sofa on which she was ensconced. She settled the bowl of popcorn on her lap. "You don't mind, do you?"

Harry sat down, leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He was clad in a blue T-shirt and a pair of form-fitting jeans. His jet-black hair was slightly mussed, his feet bare. "Well, since you ask..."

"Hey, wait a second," Hermione objected, stealing a quick glance at the television. Fred and Ginger were dancing around in the gazebo in which they'd taken refuge from a sudden thunderstorm. "Did I utter a word of complaint last week when you wanted to watch _2001: A Space Odyssey_ for the eighteenth time?"

"A 'word' of complaint?" Harry made a show of considering the matter. "No. Not that I remember. On the other hand, I _do_ distinctly recall your making this huffy little noise--"

Hermione expelled a breath.

"Yep. That's the one. You always huff when you're really annoyed but pretending not to be." Harry flashed a smug grin, then helped himself to some popcorn. "Anyway. Seeing _2001_ eighteen times is nothing. You've got to watch it...mmm...at least two dozen times before you can begin to appreciate the nuances of Stanley Kubrick's cinematic genius."

"Two dozen times?" Hermione rolled her eyes. "Puh-leeze, spare me. If I _never_ see that whoozie-whatsis astronaut guy again--"

"Dmph."

"I beg your pardon?"

Harry took a moment to chew and swallow the popcorn that had been clogging his speech. "Dave," he enunciated. "The 'whoozie-whatisis astronaut guy's' name is _Dave_, Hermione. He was played by Keir Dullea."

"Thank you, Mr. Trivia."

Her snippy comment drew a roguishly challenging glance. "Would you like me to list the performers who played the apes in the prehistoric sequence with the big black monolith from outer space?"

"Thanks, but no thanks." Whether Harry was able to do what he was offering, Hermione didn't know. But if she'd been forced to bet on the matter, she would have wagered that he was. "And forget about reciting the scene where Dave disconnects poor, misunderstood, uh, Harvey. I already know it by heart."

Now it was Harry's turn to release his breath in an irritated huff. "Hal," he corrected, very precisely.

"Hmm?" Hermione kept her expression bland, pretending to be totally engrossed in the sight of Ginger's character--who was laboring under the misapprehension that her erstwhile suitor was her hostess's hanky-pankying husband--slapping Fred's character across the face. She was perfectly aware of the name of the dangerously omniscient computer in _2001_. She simply wanted to jerk her companion's chain a bit. She owed him for acting like such a know-it-all.

"Dave the astronaut disconnects _HAL_," Harry informed her with a trace of asperity. "Harvey is the invisible rabbit in the movie with James Stewart."

Hermione turned her head and fluttered her lashes. "Why, Mistuh Potter," she cooed, thinking of Honey Chile Reese. "How evuh do you manage to keep so many vitally important facts straight in that handsome head of yours? I swear, my l'il ole brain positively _aches_ just thinkin' about it."

Harry blinked, then obviously realized he'd been tricked. He started to laugh. Hermione joined in. While her best friend tended to take certain classic science-fiction films a tad too seriously, he'd never been inclined to do the same with himself. She'd always found this to be one of his most endearing qualities.

"Keep that up, Hermione Jane," he said, flicking her nose with one finger. "And more than your l'il ole brain will be aching."

"Threat?" She tossed a kernel of popcorn at him.

He caught the tidbit and disposed of it in a single crunching bite. "Promise."

The conversational impulse seemed to ebb at that point. About the time Ginger's character went winging off to Venice with Fred's character in hot pursuit, Hermione felt Harry ease his body closer to hers. A few moments later he brought his left arm and draped it around her back. His fingertips played lightly across the curve of her shoulder, moving his sync with the film's sophisticated musical score.

She leaned her head against his chest, breathing in the clean masculine scent of his skin. She could feel the warmth of his firmly musked flesh through the stretchy fabric of his T-shirt. She stroked her fingers slowly down his torso, savoring the sinewing ripple of response her touch evoked.

That she and Harry were going to become lovers seemed obvious to Hermione. Still, she felt no compulsion to rush forward consummation. No need to hurry the inevitable along. Why this was, she wasn't really sure.

Her attitude was uncharacteristic, to say the least. She'd always been assertive and impatient. And instigator, rather than a take-life-as-it-comes types. While others might find great pleasure in anticipation, she'd never performed well in the "expectant" mode. And yet with Harry...

Was it all because she'd been close to him for so long that physical intimacy almost seemed incidental? she asked herself, frowning. Was that why she was so content to wait?

Maybe, she conceded after some reflection. Although it was difficult to believe that the sweet, hungry heat she felt each time Harry touched her presaged an experience that could be dismissed as "incidental".

Then again, maybe not. Because for all Harry's familiarity, there was no denying that her feelings toward him had under-gone a radical transformation in recent weeks. Indeed, since the night she'd learned that her attraction to him was anything but unrequitted, she'd found herself responding to him as though he were...well, not a stranger, exactly. But certainly as though he were a very different person from the one she'd always known!

And unless she was very much mistaken, he'd been responding to her in much the same way.

So. Perhaps her passivity was the result of _un_certainty, not an acceptance of some comfortable vision of what was bound to be. Perhaps she really wasn't absolutely sure of what was going to happen between them. And perhaps she was afraid--

"That's some outfit Ginger's wearing."

The wry observation startled Hermione out of her reverie. She blinked several times, registering that she was no longer sitting beside Harry. She was now sitting on his lap.

She had no memory of having shifted her position.

Nor of having had it shifted for her.

Hermione looked toward the TV, forcing herself to focus on the black-and-white images on the screen. Astaire and Rogers--he in white tie and tails, she in a swirling, feather trimmed gown--were dancing cheek to cheek.

"I think I read they had some trouble with the sequence because of it," she commented. "The, uh, dress, I mean."

"I'll bet." Harry nuzzled her ear. The caress of his warm breath sent a cascade of pleasure spilling down her spine. "Ginger looks like she's molting."

It took Hermione a second to realize that her screen idol's favorite partner had just been insulted. "_Molting?_" she echoed indignantly, shifting away from the television set.

"Yeah." An odd expression settled on Harry's face. His features tightened. His green eyes narrowed. "I don't think Fred likes the dress very much, either."

Hermione studied her longtime friend for several seconds. He looked...well, he looked as though he were in some sort of pain.

"Actually, Fred wasn't crazy about it," she finally conceded, making a squirming adjustment in her position. "The marabou trim kept shedding. He ended up with a mouthful of fluff during a couple of takes."

"Oh--" Harry cleared his throat "--really?"

"Of course, it wasn't as bad as the movie where Ginger accidently smacked him across the face with a heavily beaded sleeve," she noted, warming to her subject. "The cuff must have weighed at least three or four pounds. She whirled around like--"

"Hermione," Harry's hands closed over her hips as she started to demonstrate. His tone was urgent. "Please. Don't."

It was then that Hermione Jane Granger understood the reason for Harry James Potter's peculiar expression. She flushed hotly, suddenly becoming aware of the potently masculine contours of the body on which she was perched.

"I-I d-didn't..." she swallowed, feeling the color in her cheeks intensify. There was a quickening in her stomach. She drew in a shaky breath. "I'm sorry."

Harry's fingers tightened like a vise, keeping her exactly where she was. "No apology necessary."

There was a pause. During the course of it, Ginger's character slapped Fred's character again and the nature of Harry's hold on Hermione's body altered considerably.

"But if...if you're, uh, uncomfortable..." The quickening in Hermione's stomach had become a wild fluttering. She discovered she was plucking at Harry's T-shirt, trying to free it from the waistband of his thigh-hugging jeans. She angled a look at him from under her lashes.

"I can live with it, Hermione." His eyes sparkled with an emerald flame. His palms stroked upward from her hips. "Believe me."

She whispered his name. At least once. Perhaps twice.

Did Harry initiate the kiss that came next, or did she? Hermione neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was the meeting of their lips. The blending of their breaths. The tangling of their tongues.

Clinging...

Questing...

Craving...

The bowl of popcorn crashed to the floor in a blizzard of fluffy white kernels.

"I'll clean it up later," Harry promised thickly, pressing his mouth to the side of her throat. He began undoing the buttons of her blouse, his movements more determined than deft. His fingertips brushed against bare flesh now and again, igniting tiny bonfires just beneath her skin.

Hermione shuddered, her breath escaping in a groan. Her head fell back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw dozens of elegantly garbed dancers whirling across the TV screen in a huge production number. She wondered if any of them felt as warm as she did. Or as dizzy.

"H-Harry?"

"Mmm?" His teeth closed on her left earlobe with exquisitely calibrated pressure.

"We're missing...the g-grand finale...of the m-movie."

No sooner did she finish speaking than Harry's telephone began to ring.

The caller was his late wife's mother. From what Hermione gathered from Harry's end of the conversation, Zhia Chang wanted to invite her widowed son-in-law to Sunday brunch to introduce him to a "very nice" young woman.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognize does belong to me.

**A.N:** Wow! I must really be in a good mood to be updating so soon lol. Okay...this is the chapter you've all been waiting for. Kind of sucks that I had to give it away so soon. But I do have to warn those that do get easily offended of 'sex' between two people...maybe more...but the point is, I'm forwarning you. Enjoy :)

* * *

**Chapter Eleven:**

Hermione forgave him.

Quickly. Completely. Or so it seemed.

This surprised Harry as much as it relieved him. Because in all honesty, he didn't think he would have been as understanding had their positions been reversed.

Once his surprise at Hermione's forgiveness had faded, Harry started wondering whether she might not have welcomed the ill-timed interruption by Cho's mother. He started asking himself whether her shaky observation that they were missing the movie's grand finale might not have been code for "Take it easy, hotshot."

The possibility troubled him. While Harry James Potter laid no claims to personal perfection, he'd never numbered sexual selfishness among his faults. Had he been so caught up in his own needs that he'd given short shrift to his partner's?

Hermione had wanted him. That much, Harry wasn't going to question. But whether she'd wanted him as fast and fierce as he'd been careening toward bestowing himself on her was another matter entirely.

He knew her so well, in so many ways...

But as a woman? As a lover-to-be?

Harry's mind darted back to the telephone conversation they'd had before their first practice date.

_Don't contemporary single guys cop feels?_ he'd teased.

_Not unless they want to be accused of sexual harrassment,_ Hermione replied.

_Oh._

_Modern men are expected to ask permission before they start groping._

Hermione had been kidding, he realized. To a degree, at least. He didn't think for a second that she wanted to reduce male-female intimacy to a politically correct series of oral contracts. In fact, he was inclined to think that any modern-stlye male who asked her if he might put his hand on her breast was likely to be told, "No buddy. You may not."

So, what _did_ Hermione want?

Good questioin, Harry acknowledged.

Maybe if he paid close attention, he'd be able to figure it out.

* * *

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

They were in the kitchen of her condominium, cleaning up after chowing down on take-out from a nearby Chinese restaurant. Harry had just finished unloading the dishwasher. Whether he'd put everything away in its proper place, he couldn't say. Hermione had a rather ad hoc storage system.

"I still feel like a jerk about what happened Tuesday night," he admitted, dropping a handful of forks into what he assumed was her silverware drawer. He tried not to speculate why there was a mousetrap sitting amid the jumble of cutlery. He assumed that if he asked, Hermione would have a dazzingly logical explanation for it's presense. She'd certainly been quick with an answer when he'd inquired as to why she had three pairs of panty hose tucked between a carton of chocolate-chip ice cream and a box of croissants in her otherwise--empty freezer.

"So you've said," came the serene reply. "But as much as I enjoy having you at a disadvantage, I think three days of apologizing for something that wasn't your fault is enough. It's not as though you _asked_ Cho's mother to phone."

Harry shut the drawer and turned. Hermione was leaning against the counter between the stove and the sink. She was eating plum sause from one of the small plastic pockets that had come with their meal. He watched as she squeezed a dollop of the sause onto the index finger of her left hand, then carefully lifted the finger to her mouth and sucked it clean.

Harry felt his center of gravity shift. He'd seen Hermione perform this little routine before, of course. But up until this moment he'd always found it more amusing than arousing. He experienced a flash of the same sense of disbelief he'd felt on the banks of the river they'd gone rafting. _How in the name of Heaven could he have been oblivious to Hermione's sensuality for nearly all his adult life?_

"If I'd switched off the phone," he said after a few moments, "everything would have been fine."

"You think so?" An expression he couldn't put a name to flitted across Hermione's creamy-skinned face.

He frowned, recalling his previous anxieties about the precipituous of his passion. "Don't you?"

"What I think--" she paused, squeezing out the last of the condiment "--is that second-guessing can drive you nuts." She held up her left hand, index finger crooked. "Want a taste?"

Harry hesitated, then crossed to where Hermione was standing. She lifted her finger to his mouth. He licked. The sweet tang of plum sause flooded his tongue.

"Good," he murmured.

There was a pause. During the course of it, Hermione's gaze disengaged from his.

"You know," she eventually began, focusing on his chest. "Switching off the phone Tuesday night would have indicated a certain degree of, well, _expectation_ on your part."

"Would that have bothered you?" Harry placed his hands on either side of her body, palms pressed against the edge of the counter. His breathing had become deeper and more deliberate.

"Not...necessarily."

"I wanted you, Hermione." He could smell the clean, floral scent of her perfume. And beneath that, the feminine muskiness of her skin.

Her eyes swung back up to meet his. The look he saw in their depths increased his internal temperature by several degrees.

"Past tense, Harry?" she challenged.

"What tense would you prefer?"

"I..." A convulsive swallow.

"Future? Subjunctive? Pluperfect?" He waited a beat. "Present?"

Hermione moistened her lips. Finally she lifted her chin a notch and asked, "What would you do if I told you I'd switched off my phone when we came in?"

Harry's pulse scrambled. His breath seemed to clot in his chest. He couldn't speak.

After a few seconds Hermione uttered his name on a questioning inflation. There was a faint quiver of apprehension in her voice. Her eyes flicked back and forth, scanning his face.

Harry dragged some air into his lungs, struggling for control. Then he eased his hands inward and clasped Hermione at the waist. "I'd react," he whispered, drawing her against him and lowering his head, "with _great_ expectation."

* * *

There'd been an instant when Hermione had feared she'd gone too far--appeared too forward--with her question about switching off her phone. Harry's eventual response had assured her that she hadn't.

She'd experienced another surge of anxiety--a stab of panic honed by years of listening to admonitions about what "nice" girls allegedly did and didn't do--a few minutes later when she'd mentioned that she had condoms. Harry had flushed at the word. Genuinely flushed. She'd sensed he was embarrassed. Perhaps even a trifle shocked.

But then he'd recovered his sangfroid and produced a smile that turned her knees to jelly. "If it's all right with you," he'd said quietly. "I've got my own."

* * *

They were standing in her bedroom, facing each other, a few feet apart. Hermione was clad in a lace-trimmed ecru bra and matching panties. Harry was dowin to a pair of cotton briefs, the tanned, hair-whorled skin of his chest sheened by illumination from the lamp on her night table.

"The last time we were dressed like this was what?" he asked, his eyes bright, "--when we were all at your house jumping in your pool after our graduation ceremony?"

"We had all gotten pissed drunk that night," she said after a moment, thinking back. "You, me and Ron."

Harry studied her intently for several long moments. His steady, green gaze lingered on her breasts, as tangible as a touch. Hermione bit her lower lip.

"There's more to yours--" he gestured eloquently with cupped hands, "than I remember."

She resisted an impulse to shield herself from his arousing assessment. Glancing at the bulge in his briefs, she murmured throatingly. "There seems to be more to yours, too."

Harry gave a ragged laugh. The sound lured Hermione's gaze back to his face. "I've been known to get bigger," he said.

"Really?" His expression--combined with her own imagination--sent a distinctly feminine tremor running through her.

"Absolutely. Although I occasionaly need a little...mmm, _encouragement._"

"Oh?"

"Care to lend a hand?" Harry's dark brown brows rose. His voice descended into a deeper, darker register. "Maybe...two?"

Just as the question of which one of them had initiated the kiss in his apartment three nights ago faded into insignificances, the issue of whether it was he or she who chose the distance between them stopped mattering once they were in each other's arms.

Hermione's lips parted beneath his. Yielding. Yearning. She winnowed her fingers through his hair. His tongue slid sinuously over hers. Inviting. Inticing. She heard someone whimper. After a moment, she realized it must have been her.

Harry kissed the corners of her mouth, then nibbled a path along her jawline and nuzzled against her ear. "You're trembling, Hermione," he whispered huskily.

"So--" she drew a shuddery breath as he licked her skin, "--are you."

They kissed again. Languidly. Luxoriously. As though they had all the time in the world and intended to make use of every single second.

Her bra came off and fluttered to the floor. A moment later Harry took full-palmed possession of her naked breasts. His touch was gentle, almost reverent. She felt her nipples contract into tight rosettes in response to his tender caresses.

Hermione lifted her arms, hooking them around his neck. Her head was swimming. She closed her eyes, clinging to him, giving herself over to the sensations he was evoking.

He swept her off her feet--literally--and carried her to her bed. After lowering her onto the quilt-covered mattress, he stretched out beside her. It seemed to her that the air around them had started to shimmer and hum.

Harry began to explore her. Slowly. Oh, so slowly.

From ankle to thigh...

He cupped her calves, massaging them gently with the faintly callused pads of his thumbs. Eventually he slid his hands higher, mapping the fine crease marks at the backs of her knees with feathery touches.

From thigh to breast...

He charted the curving shape of her hips and spanned the narrowed indentation of her waist, making her giddily conscious of the femininity of her shape. Letting his fingers drift inward, he delved into the shallow dip of her naval. After many breathless moments he stroked upward to map the contours of her rib cage.

From breasts to lips...

He teased.

He tantalized.

He tasted.

Hermione was quivering, damp and urgent, long before he was done.

"Please," she panted. "Oh, please."

Harry shifted his position, sliding down her body. He sought and found the plush tips of her right breast and drew it into his mouth. He suckled deeply, triggering a roiling spasm low in her belly. Hermione curved upward toward the source of the almost painfully sweet sensation.

His name broke from her lips on a shattered gasp.

She gave. He took.  
He offered. She accepted with all her heart.

"Now," she pleaded, running her hands up and down his slick, suavely muscled back. "_Now._"

He asked, wordlessly.

She opened, willingly.

Harry stole the cry of stunned delight she gave when he entered her, absorbing the sound with a passionate, possessive kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth, underscoring the completeness of their joining. She lifted her hips to take him deeper within herself, then used her arms and legs to lock him close.

Hermione heard him groan against her lips. The sound seemed to erupt from the core of his soul. She could feel him straining. Shaking. His spine bowed toutly as he stroked forward a few critical millimeters.

Her vision grayed. The universe began to spin out of control. The possibility of rational throught shattered into a million shards of estatic sensation.

"_Harry._"

"Sweetheart. Oh...oh, _sweetheart!_"

They found release in the way they had done so many other things in their lives.

* * *

**A.N:** I just want to thank all my reviewers for being so supportive. I love you guys so much! Anyhow, my chapter is finito. I hoped you all enjoyed it. I tried my best at capturing the feelings & emotions that Harry and Hermione were feeling. I just hope I did it justice. Oh, well till the next chapter...which might carry the same things as this one...hahaha you'll just have to wait and see.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognize does belong to me.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve:**

Hermione woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and a sense that all was right with the world.

She stretched languorously, relishing the feeling of satiety that suffused her body. After a few moments she sat up and stretched again, reaching toward the ceiling and arching her spine. The bed linen fell away, puddling around her hips.

Cool air eddied across her breasts. Hermione felt their tips contract. She shifted, conscious of an echoing throb of pleasure deep in her belly. The bedsheet teased against her inner thighs.

She stretched a third time, yawning aloud and brushing her hair back from her face. She felt wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

"Harry," she whispered. Although she'd uttered the name countless of times, it left her lips as though she'd never spoken it before. The flavor of it lingered like the aftertaste of some exotic delicacy. "Oh, Harry."

She leaned back against the headboard of her bed. Closing her eyes, she let her mind fill with memories of the night before.

The ardent search of her lover's sensual mouth.

The avid stroke of his strong hands.

The potent thrust of his desire-hardened body.

Hermione's lips parted on a husky sigh. She quivered, slipping deeper into the flow of voluptuous recollections.

The bunch and release of Harry's muscles beneath her palms.

The abrasive tickle of his chest hair against her nipples.

The nudge of his knee between her legs.

_Now_, Hermione heard herself imploring through a kaleidoscopic whirl of sensation. _Now._

The white-hot moment of joining.

The wanton escalation of need that had followed in its wake.

The thrilling in her brain.

The thrumming in her blood.

The throbbing, throbbing, throbbing in every fiber of her body...

_Harry_, she'd cried out as she balanced on the brink of orgasm.

_Sweetheart_, he'd responded. _Oh...oh, sweet--_

Hermione's heart seemed to miss a beat. She opened her eyes, staring straight ahead without registering anything she was seeing.

Sweetheart, she thought.

Harry called her..._sweetheart_.

It was an endearment she'd heard him use many times. But never in addressing her. "Sweetheart" was what he'd called Cho.

Hermione's hands fisted involuntarily in the musk-scented tangle of bedsheets on either side of her legs. She drew the linen up to shied herself as a host of inchoate of emotions coalesced into a greasy knot in the pit of her stomach.

She thought back, desperately trying to remember exactly what Harry had said to her the night before.

He'd called her by name while they were in her kitchen. Of that, she was absolutely certain.

_I wanted you, Hermione_, he'd confessed, referring to what had happened in his apartment three nigths earlier.

He'd called her by name in her bedroom, too, after they'd embraced and kissed.

_You're trembling, Hermione_, he'd murmured, his breath misting against her ear, his hands gliding upward from her hims to unhook the clasp that held her bra in place.

Yet once he'd carried her to her bed...

Once they'd bared each other's bodies...

He hadn't called her Hermione after that. Not once. What's more, in the final, frenzied seconds before he'd achieved fulfillment, he'd cried out an endearment she knew he'd bestowed on another woman.

Why? she demanded silently. Why, at the most intimate of moments, had Harry failed to use her name?

Hermione stiffened suddenly, trying to ward off a reason that was rooted in the anxieties that had been roiling within her for weeks. But it was too late. The explanation elbowed its way to the front of her consciousness.

_Maybe Harry had called her sweetheart because he'd been fantasizing that she was Cho._

Unshed tears pricked at the corners of Hermione's eyes. Her chest felt as though it had been encased in a steel-banded corset. She had to fight to fill her lungs.

No, she told herself fiercely, drawing on a well of trust that was two decades deep. Harry wouldn't use me like that! No matter how much he still loves her, he wouldn't pretend--

Something on the night table next to the bed snagged her attention.

Hermione turned. Blinked. Focused her gaze.

The "something" was Harry's wallet.

On the right side of the opened black leather billfold there was a driver's liscense. A foil wrapped prophylactic--the twin of the one she remembered Harry using the night before--poked out of the compartment beneath it.

On the left side of the wallet there was a small color photograph encased in a finger-smudged plastic sleeve. The photograph was a romantically lit portrait of a bride-to-be.

A sense of betrayal detonated within Hermione at the most visceral of emotional levels. The impat was devastating.

"Cho," she whispered, feeling as fragile as an emptied eggshell. "Oh, God. _Cho._"

* * *

Harry took a slow sip of coffee. Five minutes more, he told himself. He'd wait five minutes more, then return to Hermione's bedroom and wake her up. They needed to talk.

He'd surfaced from sleep to semiconsciousness about half an hour ago, drowsily registering that he was entangled in what felt like an extremely compromising position. "Hermione?" he'd murmured.

He'd thought he was dreaming. And why not? Dreams about being intimate with Hermione Jane Granger were nothing new to him. He'd been having them for weeks!

Sweet dreams.

His lips, nuzzling her soft, sable-colored hair.

Sensual dreams.

His hands, cupping her firm, petal-tipped breasts.

Dreams so searingly vivid he would swear they were--

His bedmate had shifted her hips at that point and made a purring sound deep in her throat. The combination had shocked Harry from reverie to rigidity in the space of a single heartbeat.

_This isn't a dream_, his body had informed him in no uncertain terms. _This is reality._

And then, heaven help him, he'd thought of Cho. He didn't know why.

He only knew he had. He'd thought of her, but had blanked when it came to recalling her face.

The lapse in memory had been transitory, lasting no more than a couple of seconds. Yet for all its brevity, it had shaken Harry James Potter in more ways than he could articulate.

A surge of grief.

A slashing pang of guilt.

He'd experienced both of these emotions as his dead wife's serenely smiling image had belatedly filled his mind's eye. And following in their turbulent wake had been anger.

Anger at himself.

Anger at Cho.

Even--irrationally--anger at Hermione.

He'd come within a hairbreath of waking her. But a profound uncertainty about what might happen once he did had caused him to pull away from her instead. Easing himself out of her bed, he'd swiftly donned the pair of the trousers he'd shed the night before and made his exit. He'd ultimately sought refuge in the condo's kitchen.

Once there, he'd prepared a pot of coffee from Hermione's stock of custom-blended beans. It wasn't that he craved caffeine. He simply preferred doing something--anything!--to standing around and stewing.

Harry drained the mug, then carefully set it down on the counter. He took a calming, cleansing breath. The five minutes were up, he decided. It was time for him to--

_Hermione._

Every nerve in Harry's body snapped to attention. Pulse pounding, he pivoted to face the woman who was his longtime friend and lover of one night.

She was standing in the kitchen doorway. Her features were shuttered to the point of expressionless. Her eyes were dark and distant. She had one hand hidden behind her back.

"You're...up," he said after a few moments, trying not to sound as uneasy as he felt.

Hermione shrugged, wordlessly affirming the obvious.

"And dressed, too."

There was nothing objectionable about her attire. Harry suspected that under different circumstances he would have found the crisp white blouse and neatly pressed khaki skirt quite attractive. But given his acute awareness of the feminine flesh beneath the casual garments, their appeal was less than it might have been.

"Standard morning routine," Hermione observed, her tone as indifferent as her shrug had been. She began to walk toward him. "Get up. Get dressed. Get on with the day's business."

_Standard moring routine?_ Harry frowned, watching her approach. After what they'd shared, how could she talk about standard _anything?_ How could she behave as though--

Realization struck like a sucker punch to the gut.

Hermione had done this before. All of it.

All of it...with other men.

Men who, unlike him, didn't need any guidance when it came to coping with the comlexities of contemporary single life.

Harry started to feel a little sick.

Last night's lovemaking had been a uniquely pleasurable experience for him. But whether it had been equally pleasurable--hell, whether it had been anything out of the ordinary--for his partner, he wasn't able to say.

Short of questioning Hermione outright, Harry knew he had no guaranteed way of gauging what she'd felt in his arms. And even if he found the nerve to ask, he wasn't at all certain he'd be able to tell the difference between the truthful answer and an ego-salving lie.

Dear Merlin, he thought suddenly, doubts sprouting in his mind like poisoness mushrooms after a toxic rainfall. What if she'd been faking? What if the passioin he'd interpreted as real had been nothing but pretense? What if--

Harry rejected the scenario with savage finality. He and Hermione had been good together last night, he told himself. Matched and mated. Intuitively attuned. Utterly trusting. He couldn't--_wouldn't_--allow himself to believe her responses to him had been a sham.

But neither could he ignore the possibility that those responses might have been less than powerful than those evoked in her by previous lovers. If this morning-after awkwardness was the result of Hermione comparing him with other men...

_Tell me I'm the best you've ever had!_

Harry had never understood the emotions that could drive a man to demand such a reassurance from a woman. He understood them now. The words trembled on his lips, tainted with insecurity and anger. Clenching his hands, he forced himself to choke them down.

"I made coffee," he finally said.

"So I smelled." Hermione had come to a halt a few feet away from him, just outside touching distance.

"Would you like a cup?" he offered. He had no doubt that her stopping point was the result of a deliberate decision.

She shook her head, her brown hair swinging against her cheeks. Then she brought her hand out from behind her back. "You left this on the nightstand."

The "this" to which she quietly referred was his wallet. After a fractional hesitation, Harry reached forward and took it from her. Their fingertips brushed briefly during the exchange. His body tightened in response to the contact.

"Thanks," he replied, slipping the wallet into his pant's pocket.

Hermione shifted her weight, her gaze slid away for an instant, then returned to meet his. "I saw the photo."

"The...photo?"

"Of Cho. In your wallet."

Harry's heart seemed to jump up into his throat. He opened his mouth to respond, but found he couldn't speak.

"She's always with you, isn't she?"

His mind flashed back to what had happened earlier. _Always with him?_ he thought, scalded by the memory of the moments when he hadn't been able to recall his dead wife's face. Merciful heaven, if only Hermione knew how wrong--

"Even...last night."

It took Harry several seconds to accept that he'd heard correctly. "Wh-what?" he finally whispered.

Hermione's face was as pale as skim milk. Her expression was half desperate, half defiant. "Last nights when we made love, you pretended I was Cho."

Harry stared, shocked to the core by her flat, uninflicted accusation. He shook his head. "No," he denied, his voice raw as his emotions. "_No._"

"Don't lie to me, Harry."

"I'm not."

"You called out 'sweetheart'!"

He blinked, unable to understand why the endearment would upset her. "Hermione--"

"_Sweetheart is what you always called Cho!_"

Breathing ceased to be an unthinking, automatic process for Harry. Speech--coherent or otherwise--was temporarily beyond him.

"You never used my name," Hermione continued, her voice thickening. She was trembling. Her eyes glistened. Whether this was the result of impending tears or barely leashed temper was impossible to say. "N-not once, Harry. Not _once_ while we were making love did you use my n-name."

"And you think--"

Too appalled to complete the question, Harry took an involuntary step forward. He checked himself, midstride, when Hermione began to back away. He swallowed convulsively, struggling for control.

"No," he said harshly, holding his arms rigidly against his sides. The need to reach out was very, very strong, but he had no doubt she'd resist if he attempted to touch her. "Dear God. _No._ I swear to you, Hermione. Last night was all for you. Every kiss. Every caresss. Every breath. Every thought. Whatever I did or didn't say, there was no one--_no one!_--else. Especially not Cho."

The confession hung in the air, fierce and heartfelt. Hermione gazed up at him, her eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth, like the needles of a lie detector. After a few moments her expression altered. A look of poignant comprehension settled on her face.

"And you feel...guilty...about that," she finally said.

Harry inhaled on a short, shuddery breath, rocked by her perceptiveness. She knew him so well. Better, in some ways, than he knew himself.

"Harry?"

He couldn't deny Hermione the truth, he realized. Not now. Not after what had happened.

"Yes," he replied, shutting his mind to the pain the affirmation caused. "I feel guilty. I also feel--Merlin! So many things." He drew another unsteady breath, then forced himself to continue. "This morning when I first woke up with you, I couldn't remember Cho's face."

Her gaze flicked down toward the pocket in which he'd put his wallet. "So you looked at her picture."

He averted his face. "No." The word was bitter. "It never even occured to me."

"But you do...look at it."

Green eyes slewed back to meet brown ones. "She was my _wife_."

Hermione lifted her chin, moistening her lips with a quick lick of her tongue. The erratic jump of her pulse was clearly visible at the base of her slim throat. "And what am I?"

While the question was steadily put, Harry heard a desperate insecurity lurking beneath each syllable. He understood that insecurity very well. He was feeling deeply, desperately uncertain, too.

And vulnerable.

As vulnerable as he'd ever felt in his life.

"You're my best friend, Hermione," he responded simply. "And the woman--_the one and only woman_--I made love with last night."

A flush blossomed in Hermione's previously pale cheeks. Her lips parted on an audible exhalation. "Oh, Harry--"

A split second later she was in his arms. Harry drew her close, savoring the silken tease her hair and the warm fan of breath against his skin. He tightened his hold on her, increasing the intimacy of the way their bodies fit together. He could feel the pouting tautness of her nipples through the fabric of her clothes.

"I'm sorry," Hermione whispered tremulously.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," He responded, meaning it. He stroked her back soothingly.

"But what I said--"

"You had good reason."

She shifted, looking up at him with wide, searching eyes. Her forehead was furrowed, the set of her mouth less than steady. Her wariness was almost palpable.

She'd been remarkably honest about anxieties about what had happened between them, Harry reflected. Although expressing those fears obviously had entailed some serious emotional risks, Hermione Jane Granger had still spoken up. Others might have chosen to swallow their feelings--to allow them to fester, unvoiced. She hadn't. Could he be any less candid? Any less...courageous?

"You're not the only one who woke up with uncertainties about last night," he confessed after a few seconds, his voice tight.

"Un-uncertainties?"

It was hard. The words Harry wanted--no, _needed_--to say seemed to stick in his throat. Every masculine instinct he had rebelled against admitting his sexual insecurity. Real men were supposed to hold things in. Only wimps let it all hang out.

Of course, "real" men tended to succumb to stress-related diseases brought on by their refusal to share their emotions. They wer also prone to alienating people--frequently the "real" women they yearned to keep close--who felt holding in and shutting out were one and the same.

He drew a steadying breath, steeling himself to meet Hermione's questioning gaze. Finally, obliquely, he said, "You've been...with other men."

The bloom of color in her cheeks faded. "I'm thirty-two, Harry," she reminded him, pulling free of his embrace and stepping back. Her tone was stiff. So was her spine. "I'm not a virgin. I've had other lovers. If you have a problem with that--"

"No." He shook his head in vehement denial. "Never."

"Then _why_--"

There was anger in Hermione's big, brown eyes. And there was hurt, too. That's what brought down the last of Harry's "real man" defenses. If telling the truth was the wimp's way, so be it.

"Why?" he repeated. "Because I'm afraid I might have disappointed you last night. Because experience means expectations, and frankly--" he braced himself, like a sky diver preparing to jump, "--I'm not sure how I measured up to yours."

Hermione stared at him, clearly shocked. But after a few moments the shock gave way to understanding. It seemed, to Harry, to be a uniquely feminine brand of understanding. Deeply compassionate, yet leavened with the faintest hint of exasperated disbelief at the obtuseness of the opposite sex.

"Oh, Harry," she finally said. She appeared to be teetering between tears and laughter. "You...you _idiot_."

It was amazing how an insult could sound like the tenderest of endearments when spoken by the right woman under the right circumstances.

Harry took a step forward, closing most of the distance between them. This time, Hermione didn't move back. Instead she lifted her right hand and touched his face with her fingertips.

"Don't you know how _special_ last night was for me?" she asked throatily, tracing the line of his jaw. "To be with you. To make love with you. Oh, Harry. What y-you...what you made m-me..._f-f-feel_--"

She stopped, plainly unable to go on. It didn't matter. The shattered intensity of her tone and the searing sweetness of her expression had already obliterated Harry's doubts. His fears about being unable to distinguish between an honest sexual assessment and a well-intended lie had vanished, as well. Every fiber of his brain and body told him that there was no way--no way in the world--Hermione could be counterfeiting the emotions he saw in her face and heard in her voice.

"Hermione," he whispered. "_Oh, Hermione._"

And then she was in his arms once again. She lifted her face toward his. He gazed into her eyes for one breathlessly expectant moment, then dipped his head and took her mouth.

Kisses.

Fast. Fevered. Almost frantic.

Deep. Devouring. On the edge of desperation.

"More," Harry groaned, ravishing Hermione with teeth and tongue. He was driven by appetites only she could assuage, craving a satisfaction only she could supply. He was a starving man and she...sweet heaven, she was sustenance.

Hermione nipped at his lower lip then soothed the sting with a licking caress. "More," she concurred on a gasp. "Much...more."

He stroked her with his hands, palms greedy, widespread fingers gleaning. She shuddered, her nails lightly scoring the flesh at the nape of his neck.

He said her name a second time.

And then a third.

Last night's lovemaking had been remarkable, he thought dizzily. _But this..._

There were no words to describe the untrammeled potency of the emotions that were surging within him.

Hermione scattered a series of quick, profligate kisses over his naked chest. She nuzzled and nibbled, sampled and savored. Harry had the sensation he was being feasted upon. His knees nearly gave way when she found the tightly furled nubbins of his male nipples and began to suck on them.

"Please," he groaned as a white-hot shaft of pleasure tore through him. Exactly what he was pleading for, he didn't know. Half of him was afraid Hermione would stop what she was doing. The other half feared the opposite. "_Please._"

He thought he heard her say his name. The roar of his blood in his ears made it impossible to know for sure. His heart was hammering against the inside of his chest as though trying to break through his ribs.

The garments that had merely annoyed him earlier swiftly became a major impediment. Harry wanted to touch skin. To press flesh against flesh. He and Hermione had bared the hidden corners of their souls by confessing their anxieties about the night before. To keep their bodies covered after doing that...

He undid the front of her blouse with more speed than finesse. Although he didn't inflict any irreparable damage on the garment, he did tear off some--at least two, maybe as many as four--of its buttons in the process.

Beneath the blouse was a plain white bra. Harry dealt with it in the same expedient fashion.

Hermione gave a soft cry of pleasure when he cupped her naked breasts with his palms. He buffed their peaking tips with their pads of his thumbs. She trembled, clutching at his shoulders as though seeking support. Her head tilted back and her hair spilled away the exquisitely alluring line of her throat as she arched into his caresses.

He teased her burgeoning feminine flesh with the edges of his nails. She whimpered brokenly, an uncontrolled shudder of response rocking her body. A moment later he pressed his mouth against the side of her neck. He could feel the jump of her pulse. It matched the tom-tom rhythm of his own accelerating heartbeat.

Harry kissed an erotic path upward, eventually renewing his claim on Hermione's lips. She asserted her sensual sway over him at the same time. they ate at each other. Wildly. Wantonly. Without a shred of inhibition . Their tongues twined in a sinuously evocative dance.

The distinctions between giving and taking blurred. Her pleasure became his and vice versa.

He shoved her khaki skirt up, bunching it aournd her waist. Then he eased down her underpants, baring the taut surface of her well-toned belly and the cluster of curls nestling at the juncture of her pale thighs.

At the same time Harry was doing this, Hermione was fumbling at the front of his trousers, trying to open his fly. The questing eagerness of her efforts nearly undid him. He groaned through gritted teeth.

"_I w-want..._" she panted, obviously frustrated by her clumsiness.

"_I know_," he returned hoarsely, coming to her aid. He wanted, too. He wanted so much he felt as though he might explode with it.

The pop of a button coming undone.

The hiss of a zipper being pulled down.

While Harry was never able to pinpoint the exact moment he remembered the need for protection, he never questioned where he found the strength of will to defer his desires for the time it took to do the responsible thing. Its sources were his unwavering awareness of who he was with and his absolute determination to safeguard her from even the slightest possibility of harm.

Hermione didn't understand his actions at first. And heaven knew, he was in no condition to provide a lucid explanation of why he suddenly felt compelled to start trying to find his wallet. But once confused resentment gave way to comprehension...

"Let me help," she urged.

Moments later they were joined in another torrid embrace. Harry slid his hands down the supple line of Hermione's spine and beneath the rounded firmness of her bottom. Tightening his hold, he lifted her up. He felt her fingers clasp his latex-sheathed manhood.

She opened to him.

He took what she was offering with a single, gliding stroke.

"Oh..."

"...Harry!"

Harry staggered a step or two before he found something to brace Hermione against. She clung to him, her hands linked behind his neck, her legs locked around his waist.

Harry closed his eyes, struggling for control. Hermione shifted slightly then stilled. He sensed that she, too, wanted to postpone the inevitable.

How long his discipline held was impossible for him to calculate. Traditional increments of time had no meaning on the edge of ecstacy.

He opened his eyes and gazed at Hermione's perspiration-sheened face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted and trembling. Her eyelids were squeezed tightly shut.

He whispered her name.

Her lashes fluttered up. Brown eyes locked onto green ones. "Harry," she murmured, her mouth curving into a smile that was as old as Eve.

"Yes," he concurred, a surge of possessiveness roughening his voice. "_Harry._"

Then he began to thrust. With each thrust, he said his partner's name.

Soon her body began to tighten around his. Easing forward, Harry felt the faint ripples that signaled the start of convulsive feminine release. He saw Hermione's features contort as though she was trying to delay what was about to happen for a few more seconds.

He thrust one last time. For you, he thought. Only for you.

"_Hermione!_" he cried aloud.

Passion trasported Harry James Potter and Hermione Jane Granger to a paradise intended for just two people. Another, even more powerful emotion--unrecognized by either participant but still very real--ensured that there was no intrusions on their privacy.

* * *

**A.N--**I'm so excited! For the last few days I've actually been depressed because my kitten had ran away, and I was realy bummed out about it. My parents took pity on me and decided that they were going to adopt a new kitten for me. I'm really psyched out about it and truly happy. Anyways, and as for this chapter. Did you guys like it? I knew alot of you guys did like the last oneby the reviews you had all left and I thank you for that. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this one.


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N-** Hello everyone. I just want to thank all of my reviewers for starters.You guys are amazing! And I named my new kitten Lou, thanks for asking Gryffindor Drummer! It's my birthday today so I'm in a very good mood. I wanted to award you with this chapter that I know you've all been dying to read. Well, here you go. Bon apetite! Hahahaha

* * *

**Chapter 13:**

"Hermione?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you alright?"

It took Hermione several seconds to rev up her sensation-fogged brain to the point where she could rationally contemplate Harry's question. Her first lucid thought was that "all right" was a rather pallid--no, make that a positively _puny_--choice of adjectives given the circumstances.

"Never better," she eventually replied.

"You're sure?" A gentle caress tempered the insistence of their inquiry.

"Positive." She shifted, triggering a soft throb of pleasure between her thighs. It was an echo of a much more intense physical response and it made her feel just a wee bit wicked. Inspired by that feeling, she indicated the object they were leaning against with a vague wave of her hand and confided. "I'm a little worried about the refrigerator, though."

"Huh?"

"You had me pinned against the front of it when you were--" she gestured with elegant expliciteness, "--you know."

Perhaps Harry did. Then again, perhaps he didn't. The sound he made in reaction to her statement--half choke, half strangled-gasp--was difficult to interpret.

"I think you might have dented it," Hermione added, smoothing the crumpled front of her nearly buttonless white blouse.

There was a pause.

"The..._refigerator?_" Harry finally asked.

"Don't worry." She smiled demurely, savoring a uniquely feminine sense of power. Toying with her best friend was naughty and she knew it. She was also aware that doing so was quite out of character. But he was making it so easy for her! Only a saint could have resisted the temptation to stir him up. And as her behavior of a short time ago had amply demonstrated, she definitely was not a candidate for canonization. "This is a brand-new condo, remember? All the major appliances are still under warranty."

Harry seemed genuinely relieved by this assertion at first. Then the outrageousness of her words apparently sank in. His green eyes narrowed. His features tightened. Within the space of a few heartbeats, Hermione's supposedly oh-so-easy-to-stir-up target had been transformed into a very tough looking customer.

Uh-oh, she thought, a peculiar thrill skittering up her spine. With the thrill came the unnerving realization that she hadn't been tempted into teasing her lover of one night because she'd thought she could get away with it. Quite the contrary. She'd succumbed to the lure because she'd suspected she'd get caught.

"Harry--" she began, conscious of a sudden speed-up in her pulse rate.

What she'd intended to say, Hermione Jane Granger never knew for certain. No matter. Whatever it was, she didn't get an opportunity to see it. A split-second after she spoke his name, Harry James Potter's "tough customer" facade cracked wide open and he started to chuckle.

The chuckle quickly gave way to a full-throated laugh.

Moments later that full-throated laugh became an up-from-the-belly guffaw.

There was nothing mocking or mean about Harry's humor. Just the opposite. The sound of it was warmly, wonderfully expansive. It was also highly infectious. Before she realized what was happening, Hermione was laughing, too.

"Don't..._w-w-worry?_" Harry sputtered, his face flushed with hilarity. "All the m-major appliances are still..._under w-warranty?_"

"It's not...that...f-funny," she countered, struggling for air.

"Is so."

"Is not."

"Is _so!_"

"Is _not!_"

The reversion to kid-style squabbling provoked more laughter. A lot more. It continued until the threat of asphyxia reduced both of them to gasping giggles.

"Is...s-so," Harry managed to say, wiping at his eyes.

"Is..." Hermione hiccuped, unable to recall what she was disputing but determined to have the last word. "Not."

There was a long pause. It was sufficient in length for general resuscitation if not for the complete recovery of lost dignity.

"You weren't serious about the dents, were you?" Harry finally asked, slipping his left arm around Hermione's shoulders and easing her closer to him. He showed no indication toward getting up off her kitchen floor.

His touch scrambled the few synopses in Hermione's brain that weren't already reeling from the residual effects of temporary oxygen deprivation. She blinked several times, realizing she had absolutely no idea to what he was referring.

"The dents?" she echoed.

"The dents I allegedly put in the front of your refrigerator when I was, uh--" he performed a rudely eloquent gesture with his free hand, "--you know."

Comprehension dawned.

Hermione blushed.

"Oh. _Those_ dents," she said, her voice considerably higher than usual. Clearing her throat, she hauled it back down to it's normal register. "Uh, no," she continued. "Not really. I mean, I was just...um--"

"Teasing?"

So much for the feminine smugness she'd been indulging in earlier, she thought ruefully. Harry obviously had known what she'd been up to from the get-go.

There was another pause.

"Actually, it'd probably be pretty difficult to dent," Hermione eventually remarked, not really focusing on what she was saying. The comment simply seemed to slip into her mind and slide out her mouth. "It's very...sturdy."

Harry buffed the curve of her shoulder with his fingertips. "Are you talking about your refrigerator?"

"Mmm," she affirmed absently, distracted by the shimmer of warmth radiating down her arm. "I'll bet we could bang on the front of it all day and never--"

Hermione stiffened, abruptly registering the double entendre she'd just uttered. She pulled free of Harry's embrace, her gaze flying to meet his. What she saw in his face made her heart cartwheel in her breast.

"Maybe _you_ could bang on the front of something all day," he drawled suggestively. "But as willing as my spirit might be, my flesh tends to get weak after a couple of hours."

And then, just as before, he started to laugh. Unable to help herself, Hermione joined in.

They ended up clinging to each other like orphans in a storm.

"_Oh, Hermione_," Harry whispered huskily, nuzzling his mouth against her neck. "_You're so good for me._"

The words were straight from the heart. Hermione had no doubt about that. Yet as tenderly sincere as they were, they triggered an odd, almost painful pang of emotion deep within her. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Harry's declaration. It simply didn't seem...right.

"You're good for me, too," she said, stroking his back.

Exactly how long they held each other, Hermione never tried to guess. But it was long enough for her to review the events that had transpired since she'd walked into her kitchen--more than long enough for her to come to grips with what would have happened had she and Harry not been able to confront their morning-after anxieties.

"We were lucky," she murmured feelingly, a might-have-been chill running through her.

"Lucky?" Harry eased back a bit. "How?"

She hesistated, loath to revive uncertainties she prayed had been laid to rest.

"Hermione?"

She had no choice. She had to answer.

"If we hadn't been honest with each other about last night--" she began.

"That wasn't luck." The interruption was swift and certain. "It was twenty years of shared history. We're _friends_."

_Twenty years of shared history._

_Friends._

The words echoed through Hermione's brain. Once again she experienced a strange sense that something important wasn't as it should be. Somthing was...missing.

Unbidden, her memory flashed back to an exchange she and Harry had had many weeks--Lord, it seemed like a lifetime--ago.

_We're _friends_, Harry_, she remembered herself saying with fierce conviction the night he asked her to help him learn to be a single guy. _Friends help friends when friends need it._

_Yes,_ he'd responded. _But it's important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change._

Hermione exhaled on a shuddery breath, silently acknowledging that Harry's assertion was still valid. Except for one crucial thing. She didn't need help. What she needed was--

"Hermione?"

Startled out of her reverie, Hermione Jane Granger looked at the man who'd just addressed her. She saw the past in his compassionate, intelligent eyes. She saw their present in his quirky but compelling mouth. But she couldn't...quite...see their future.

She wondered fleetingly whether she truly wanted to.

"What do friends do once they've become lovers?" she asked softly.

A flash of surprise crossed Harry's lean-featured face. Then he began to smile. Slowly. Very slowly. As his lips curved upward, he lifted his right hand and caressed the side of her face. She felt his touch to the very marrow of her bones.

Finally he offered Hermione a simple response--an invitation, really--that opened the door on a multitude of possibilities.

"Let's find out."

* * *

**A.N-** I just wanted to thank all my reviewers again. You guys are awesome! You rock! 


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything that has to do with the Harry Potter series. Anything you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N:** I just wanted to apologize for the long delay for this chapter. I'm truly sorry ;). Anyhow, I just wanted to announce that I've already got an outline for another story. I won't give out any details until I'm almost to the closure of this story, which is still far off. I hope you all enjoy this chapter. And also I want to thank my reviewers. You guys are the highlight of my day.

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen:**

"_Quesadillas?_" Scotty the waiter asked dubiously about thirty-six hours later. "You both want to order..._quesadillas?_"

"We've decided to try something different," Harry explained.

The ponytailed server frowned, plainly perturbed. "But what happened to that stuff you told me about knowin' what you like and stickin' to it?"

"Are you trying to steer us away from the _quesadillas_, Scotty?" Hermione queried in a joking tone.

"Of course not." The denial was fast and faintly miffed. "They're great. The best in London."

"So what's the problem?" Harry reached for the long-necked bottle of ale which, along with the glass of ice tea for Hermione, Scotty had delivered to their table just moments after they'd sat down. "You saw us walk in and told the kitchen to start making chicken _fajitas_ and _tacos al carbon?_"

The young waiter flushed and began fiddling with the gold stud he wore in his left earlobe. "Well, uh..."

Harry looked at Hermione. She was in the process of squeezing a slice of lemon into her ice tea. Catching her eye, he cocked a brow in wordless inquiry. She shrugged casually, ceded the decision to him.

"Maybe we should forget the _quesadillas_ and do our usual thing," he said after a moment, his gaze lingering on the succulent shape of his companion's rosy mouth. He caught a flash of even white teeth and a pale, pink tongue as her lips parted, and felt a responsive stirring in his groin.

_How could I have been so oblivious for so many years?_ he demanded of himself for the umpteenth time.

It still made no sense to him. While he'd been wholeheartedly faithful to Cho from the instant they'd met, he hadn't been blind to the appeal of other members of her sex. Except for Hermione. As integral a part of his life as she'd always been, she'd never registered on his masculine radar until midway through their first practice date. And once that had happened--

The abrupt realization that Scotty was speaking caused Harry to veer off from this well-worn line of reflection. Disciplining his features into what he hoped was a neutral expression, he dragged his attention back to the waiter.

"Sorry," he apologized, lifting the bottle of ale to his lips and taking a deep drink. He speculated briefly about the efficiency of splashing some of the well-chilled brew between his thighs. "I didn't quite catch what you said."

"He told you the customer's always right at Rio Bravo, so if we want _quesadillas_ we can have them," Hermione replied, reclaiming his gaze. While her words were matter-of-fact, Harry heard what sounded like smugness lurking beneath them.

No, he corrected himself a moment later, gauging the expression dancing in her long-lashed eyes. He took another swig of ale. Not smugness, it was _satisfaction_ he'd detected in Hermione's voice. A dulcet, distinctly feminine type of satisfaction.

She knew. Hermione Jane Granger knew the effect she was having on him and she was taking great pleasure in watching him squirm.

Had she always been this kind of tease? he wondered, recalling her behavior on the banks of the river two weeks ago and on several occasions since. Or was this some sort of witchery she'd developed especially for him?

"Oh, I get it!" Scotty's triumphant exclamation put a period to Harry's speculation. "I _knew_ something was going on even before you ordered _quesadillas_, but I couldn't figure out what it was," He grinned toothily. "You both have finally started up with each other, huh?"

Harry nearly tipped over his ale bottle. Ye gods, he thought appalled. Was it _that_ obvious? He was going to have to face his other best friend at work tomorrow. If Scotty had sensed the change in his relationship with Hermione, it was pounds to pastries Ron would, too.

Not that the change was something he intendeed to hide, he swiftly emphasized to himself. Heavens, no! But it wasn't something he planned to broadcast to family members and friends, either. At least, not yet. He was still trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of the past day and a half--to say nothing of the matter of what he wanted to happen next.

Harry flashed back to the question Hermione had put to him the previous morning.

_What do friends do once they've become lovers?_ she'd asked him.

_Let's find out,_ he'd answered, meaning it.

Let's--let us--find out.

_Us._

Him and her. He and she. Harry and Hermione.

Two people, joined in an intimate journey of self-discovery.

It wasn't going to be all fun and games, he acknowledged with a mental grimace. Yesterday's tumultuous encounter in Hermione's kitchen had made that abundantly clear. Each of them was toting emotional baggage that needed to be pried open and unpacked. If they had to start contending with other people's questions and concerns, well--

Hermione's voice yanked him back to the present.

"Harry and I are friends, Scotty," he heard her declare. There was a definite edge to the penultimate word.

The waiter chuckled knowingly. "That's what Judge What's-his-face--you know, the really straight back with the number after his name?--said about him and the ex-Miss Peach Fuzz he brought in here the other night."

Harry blinked, momentarily thrown by this conversational detour. _A really straight back Judge with a number after his name and a former Miss Peach--_

Oh, Merlin.

"Are you talking about Talcott Emerson the Third and Honey Chile Reese?" he asked incredulously.

Scotty put a finger to his lips, apparently afflicted by a belated concern for discretion. Eyes darting back and forth, he leaned into the table and muttered, "Uh-huh."

"They eat at Rio Bravo?" Harry had no idea why he was soliciting this information, nor why he'd resorted to whispering to obtain it. Unless, of course, it had something to do with his sudden determination to discuss anybody's private affairs but his own.

"Sometimes, yeah," came the sotto voice affirmation. It was accompanied by more rapid eye movements. "Not the other night, though. They left before their food was ready because some blonde-haired chap with a black trenchcoat and the paralyzed hair had showed up."

"You mean, Draco Malfoy?" The slightly disjointed query came from Hermione.

"That's him," Scotty concurred, straightening. He cocked his head, his earring winking. When he resumed speaking, it was in his normal voice. "Did you ever wonder how much that guy spends on hairspray and styling gel?"

"Uh--" Harry turned an involuntary laugh into a cough, "--no, Scotty. Not recently."

"Well, I'll bet its a _bundle._" The waiter seemed to ponder this for a few seconds, then shrugged his beefy shoulders and returned to business. If he had any sense of the emotional turmoil his earlier remarks had provoked, he didn't show it. "So. Are you absolutely sure about the _quesadillas?_"

Harry looked across the table at Hermione. She smiled crookedly, the expression in her eyes suggesting that she wasn't absolutely sure about anything at the moment, including the cost of Draco Malfoy's hair care regime. He smiled back, emphasizing with her confusion.

"Forget the _quesadillas,_" he finally said, transferring his gaze to their server. "We'll stick with the chicken _fajitas_ and _tacos al carbon._"

Scotty beamed his approval of this decision.

Then, with the artlessness that seemed the essence of his personality, he offered an assessment of their new relationship.

* * *

"'A cute couple'? He thinks you and I make a 'really cute couple'?"

Harry fingered the neck of his ale bottle, trying to get a fix on Hermione's mood. It was a damned sight easier than examining his own complicated reactions to their just-departed waiter's unsolicited remarks.

"I'm pretty sure Scotty meant it as a compliment," he ventured.

"Oh, I'm positive he did." Hermione ripped open a packet of aritficial sweetener and dumped the contents into her ice tea. She then started agitating the beverage with a spoon. "That's what bothers me."

Harry rimmed the lip of the bottle with the ball of his right thumb. "You don't like being...coupled?"

The question came out sounding more provocative than he intended. Or so he tried to tell himself. Deep down, he knew differently.

His companions spoon clattered against the side of her glass. Her brown eyes lifted to meet his. He watched a flush of color blossom in her smooth-skinned cheeks. He felt a hint of heat enter his own face.

"That depends," she replied after a moment or two, her voice considerably throatier than it had been.

"Oh?" This time Harry didn't bother attempting to persuade himself the provocation was unintentional.

Hermione's chin notched up a fraction of an inch. "Whom I'm being coupled with."

There was a pause. Harry chugged down the remainder of his ale, conscious of a renewal pressure between his thighs. His tablemate sipped carefully at her ice tea.

"What about the 'cute' part?" he eventually asked.

A grimace. "Cute has never been one of my favorite adjectives."

There was a wealth of truth in the declaration, Harry reflected. He could remember Hermione rolling her eyes in response to the word "cute" as far back as...jeez, as back as sixth or seventh year of school!

The reason for her antipathy had eluded him during adolescense. Looking back, he suspected it had been rooted in her belief that the quantities of "cute".

His conclusions in this regard probably had been right, he conceded with a touch of regret. Hermione Jane Granger had been labeled a lot of things--including a brain, a gutsy babe and a pain in the butt--while they were growing up. But she'd never, ever been called cute. Not even by the guys, and there had been a few, who'd been interested in keeping company with her.

Cho, on the other hand, had been considered cute--by nearly everyone who'd counted in their teenage universe. And while Harry didn't like to dwell on the fact, he couldn't deny that this had been one reason he'd been attracted to her. She'd been a highly desirable prize in the eyes of his peers. Winning her affection had wrought a great change in his geeky self-image.

His relationship with Cho had been so easy, he mused. She'd been endlessly admiring of everything he did. Effortlessly sweet and supportive under any and all circumstances. Try as he might, he couldn't remember more than a handful of instances when she'd questioned an opinion he'd expressed or challenged a decision he'd reached.

And yet...

She hadn't needed to, had she? he asked himself, peering at the past with 20-20 hindsight. She hadn't needed to questioin or challenge or confront. Because for all her apparent giving in and going along, Cho Liyah Chang--his dear love, his dead wife--had gotten everything she'd wanted, nearly all the time.

While he...dear Lord. He'd never had an inkling!

Well, no. That wasn't absolutely true. He had noticed that Cho seemed to possess the ability to weep at will. Heaven knew, the timing of her tears had struck him as uncannily convenient more than a few occasions. But even so, he'd never seriously thought...

All right. Fine. Maybe she had manipulated him and he'd never seen it. So what? Love was supposed to be blind, wasn't it? And love was what he'd felt--what he would always feel--for Cho. From the moment she'd entered his life, he'd known that they were meant to be together. He'd known it with the same instantaneous and unswerving certainty that Hermione's father and his other best friend had experienced when they'd first met their future wives. True love had struck him--as it had struck them--with the irrevocable suddeness of a lightening bolt.

Harry looked across the table. Hermione looked back, her gaze characteristically direct. He had the feeling that she'd been watching him for some time.

She wasn't cute, he thought. She never had been. She never would be.

And she sure as hell wasn't inclined to make life easy. Not for him. Certainly not for herself.

Questions? Challenges? Confrontations? Those were a vital part of Hermione Jane Granger's modus operandi. The idea of his longtime friend being endlessly admiring of anyone--except Gilderoy Lockhart--was about as plausible as flying pigs.

She was smart and she knew it. She suffered fools grumpily or not at all.

She could also be incredibly stubborn. Not always, to be sure. And generally not without good reason. Still, trying to change her mind once it was set was like trying to chip through a concrete wall with a plastic spoon.

Plus, she was so damned sexy...

Harry exhaled on a hiss, clenching his hands as a surge of desire coursed through him, obliterating considerations of Hermione's brains and backbone. The potency of it shocked him.

He wanted her. Again. If not right now, then very, very soon.

And she wanted him in return. He could see it in her wide brown eyes.

He knew he'd be able to hear the wanting if she spoke. To feel it if he placed is fingertips against the pulse he could see throbbing at the base of her throat. And if he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, he'd be able to taste--

"I guess it is," Hermione said suddenly, her voice husky.

"Is...what?"

"That obvious."

Harry started to tell her he didn't understand. Then he realized he did, all too well. "You mean us?" he asked. "That we've, uh, started up with each other?"

One corner of Hermione's mouth indented, apparently in response to his choice of words. "I was hoping it might be something only Scotty could tune in on."

"Me, too," Harry admitted after a moment, feeling his own mouth quirk. "I've been worrying about facing Ron tomorrow at work."

"You're concerned he'll be able to...tell."

"Basically, yeah."

"I've been worried about what Lavender might think. And Ginny. It's not that I'm ashamed of anything we've done. It's just that...well..."

"You'd like the two of us to come to terms with each other before the rest of the world gets involved."

Hermione stared at him levelly for several seconds then lowered her lashes, veiling her eyes. She fiddled with her ice tea glass for a moment or two, her movements not quite steady. "Yes," she finally said.


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything that has to do with the Harry Potter series. Anything you don't recognize does belong to me.

**A.N: **Sorry for the long awaited update guys. But I've been going through a lot of stress lately. I just started school again. My books cost a fortune and a friend of mine had gotten into a severe car accident the other day. Yeah, talk about a bad day. But here's the chapter that you've guys been bugging me about. And also I'm going to update a chapter of my new story today too. It's not Harry Potter related but I hope you guys like it. Just go to my profile and you'll find it there. Please review on that one too, please. Thanks a bunch guys.

**------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**

**Chapter Fifteen:**

"How does that feel?"

"Oh, God."

"Better?"

"It's...oh. Just a little more--no. Higher."

"Here?"

"It's not quite--"

"Here?"

"_Oh._ Yes. Oh, Harry. Oh...oh, _yes-s-s._"

It was shortly before 10:30 p.m. on the last Friday in September, two weeks--almost to the hour--since Hermione Jane Granger and Harry James Potter had made love for the first time. She was sitting on the edge of his bed. He was kneeling behind her, trying to massage away the effects of what he gathered had been a very stressful workday. He was clad in a pair of pajama bottoms. She was shoeless and down to a few scraps of lace-trimmed underwear.

"Relax," Harry counseled, probing Hermione's nape with his thumbs. "Take nice, deep breaths."

A few moments slipped by. He sensed a slight easing in the knotted muscles he was trying to undo.

"Harry?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you sure you don't mind that I programmed my home phone to forward calls here?"

Oh, Merlin, Harry thought, grimacing as he felt a renewal of the tension in Hermione's neck. Hadn't they already gone through this?

"I'm positive," he said, keeping his hands and voice steady.

"I try not to let my professional life spill over into my personal one," Hermione went on. There was no indication that she'd registered his response. "But this new account has everyone at the agency totally--"

"Hermione, it's okay," he interrupted, clasping her shoulders for emphasis. "You don't have to justify taking your job seriously to me."

"But--"

"No buts." A firm squeeze. "Or if's." A second squeeze. "And before you ask again--no. I'm not annoyed you had to cancel our dinner plans tonight. I understand."

Her reluctance to accept his reassurances was palpable. He could gauge the depths of it through his fingertips. Then something apparently made her decide to take him at his word. The resistance drained out of her. She exhaled heavily, her head drooping toward her chest.

Harry resumed the massage. It bothered him that Hermione seemed to expect him to resent the demands her career placed upon her. It made him wonder about the men who'd proceeded him in her life. It also made him wonder whether he might--unwittingly--be giving off some sort of male chauvinist vibes.

"Tell me more about this new account, Hermione," he invited. "It sounds as though you're dealing with the client from hell."

His observation drew a weary chuckle. "A client from hell I could handle. This one apparently escaped from the Planet of Morons. He harbors delusions of adequacy as a copywriter."

"Illiterate?"

"It's more like he composes slogans in an alien language, then tries--none too successfully--to translate them in English." Hermione sighed and shifted beneath his hands. "If he has his way, we'll have another zombie cola campaign."

"Another _what?_"

She glanced over her shoulder. "You've never heard the zombie cola story?"

Harry searched his memory. Over the years he and Hermione had spent a fair amount of time discussing their respective professions. He was genuinely interested in what she did and how she did it. And she'd always seemed equally intrigued by his job. This was one reason her earlier anxiety about forwarding her phone calls had netted him. He knew she wouldn't have thought twice about doing so before they'd become lovers. He didn't like the notion that she'd started second-guessing herself--and him--in the aftermath of their physical intimacy.

"Not that I recall, no," he finally said.

Hermione turned around to face him. "It's a classic ad world story," she began with the fluancy of a practical raconteur. "A few years back, there was a beverage company that advertised its top soft drink as having a 'come alive' taste."

"_That_ I remember."

"I'm not surprised." She brushed her hair back behind her ears. The movement drew Harry's attention to her lingerie-clad breasts. He felt his pulse kick into a higher gear. "It was a great campaign. And a good product, too."

He lifted his gaze back to her face. "I'm...sure."

Hermione's lips twitched, clearly indicating his scrutiny hadn't gone unmarked--or unappreciated.

"Anyway," she said after a second or two, her voice slightly breathier than it had been. "The company started marketing internationally. But rather than working up a specialized pitch for each country, the front office decided to translate their 'come alive' slogan into the appropriate language and go with that."

"So?"

Hermione's eyes glinted with mischief. "So-o-o...ads they ran in Japan proclaimed that this particular soft-drink would bring people back from beyond the grave."

"Zombie cola," Harry intoned, grinning.

"Other beverages may refresh you. But ours revives the dead!"

They both laughed. Harry slipped an arm around his lover of two weeks and drew her close. She relaxed into his embrace.

"Thanks for loosening me up," she said softly, leaning her head against his shoulder.

He caressed her, savoring the silken stir of her hair and the tantalizing scent of her lightly perfumed skin. "My pleasure."

"You have remarkable hands, you know. Very...deft."

The stroke of his fingers became more intimate. "Grasping a wand, writing reports and handeling criminals...it tends to enhance a man's dexterity."

"Oh, really?" The query was accompanied by an up-from-under-the-eyelashes look that sent his temperature soaring . "I thought you male ministry workers devoted your days to interfacing with your long _wands._"

"Actually," he countered, adjusting the fit of their bodies, "we spend a lot of time comparing our swish and flick movements."

"In terms of--" she twisted slightly, allowing his "dexterous digits" access to the clasp that held her bra closed, "--size?"

"Capacity," he corrected, cupping her breasts. A feathery brush of his thumbs turned the petal-lush aureoles of her nipples to pebbled velvet.

"And how--" a soft gasp of pleasure, "--does yours m-measure up?"

"It's huge," Harry answered, dipping his head to steal a kiss. Her tongue darted out to meet his.

"Oh...my." Hermione sighed languidly when the kiss finally ended. Harry felt the seductive slide of her hands between his thighs. Her touch was slow and sensuous. He gritted his teeth, trying not to groan. "Speaking of things...that come..._a-alive._"

At that mind-blowing juncture, the bedside telephone started to shrill.

The caller was Ron's wife. She wanted to speak with Hermione.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"All right," Lavender Weasley proclaimed as she plunked herself down on Hermione's living room sofa the following morning. "Tell me _everything._"

Hermione suppressed a sigh and seated herself on the edge of one of the two director's chairs positioned opposite the sofa. "Everything isn't all that much, Lavender."

"Be that as it may. Let's go down to the nitty-gritty. What was Harry doing here at eleven o'clock last night?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, please."

"He wasn't here."

"Hermione." Lavender leaned forward, her expression severe. "I spoke to him. He answered your phone. And unless my ears very much deceived me, he was in your bed when he did it."

"Well, actually--" Hermione twiddled with a lock of hair, "--it was his."

"Excuse me?"

"His phone." Another bit of twiddling. "I was having my calls forwarded."

Lavender's eybrows soared. "To Harry's?"

Hermione nodded.

"Then _you_ were in _his_ bed?"

Hermione nodded again.

There was a pause.

"How long has this been going on? Lavender finally asked.

"That depends on how you define 'this'."

"Excuse me?"

"It's complicated, Lavender." Hermione rubbed the nape of her neck, longing for a pair of "deft" hands. "In the beginning, back in May, it was only practice--"

"_Practice!_"

Hermione stiffened, startled by the C-above-high-C exclamation. While she recognized that her relationship with Harry had gotten off to an unorthodox start, Lavender's reaction struck her as being a trifle overdone.

"That's right," she confirmed with a touch of defensiveness," Harry said he wanted to learn how to be a contemporary single guy and he asked me to help him--"

She broke off, suddenly comprehending her friend's shock of a few seconds earlier. She felt herself flush. "N-no," she stammered. "Oh, Merlin. _No._ Lavender, it's not what you think! Harry and I...we...we weren't practicing _sex!_"

There was a short, stunned silence.

"But you _have_ been having it," Lavender finally asserted. Her tone had a tiptoeing-on-eggshells quality. "Sex, I mean. With...Harry."

Hermione dipped her head, feeling the heat in her cheeks intensify. A few degrees more and they'd probably burst into flames. "Yes."

"Safely?"

"Lavender!" Embarrassment turned to indignition. "For Merlin's sake!"

"Sorry," her friend apologized, appearing genuinely contrite. She remained silent for several seconds, seeming to debate with herself. Eventually she asked, "So when did you two start..."

Hermione spent a moment contemplating the possibility of informing Lavender that this was none of her business. Because it really wasn't. Still, the temptation to "tell" was very strong.

"A little more than two weeks ago," she confessed.

"Two weeks?" Lavender frowned. "But you said...I mean, if you didn't--this is nearly October, Hermione! What were you and Harry practicing back in May?"

Again, Hermione considered the options of telling her friend to butt out.

After dismissing this option for the second time, she started to talk.

"Ohmigod," Lavender whispered about ten minutes later.

"You sound like Ginny," Hermione observed with a wry laugh, recalling the late July telephone conversation she'd had with her other former schoolmate.

Lavender sat bolt upright. "Ginny knows?"

Hermione groaned inwardly, comprehending--a split second too late--what she'd done. "Uh--"

"You _told_ Ginny?"

"No!" The denial was automatic. then conscience kicked in and she had to backtrack. "That is--well, yes. I did tell her some things about Harry and me. About our practice dates. And our first kiss. But not about our going out for real. Or about our...uh...going to bed."

"Why didn't you tell her those things?" Lavender demanded sharply, her hazel eyes bright with suspicion.

"Because they hadn't happened when I'd talked to her."

"Oh." An offended sniff. "I see."

"Lavender, come on."

"Harry's practically my brother-in-law, Hermione. He's practically family! I can't tell you how hurt--"

Goaded, Hermione hauled out a bone she suddenly realized she'd been intending to pick with her friend since the night Harry had explained why he'd needed help with his social life.

"_You're_ hurt?" she countered, glaring. "How do you think _I _felt when I found out you were trying to fix my best friend up with half the women in London without saying a word to me?"

"What?"

"Oh, don't deny it. Harry told me that you--and Molly, and Cho's mother, and heaven knows who else--were inundating him with introductions to allegedly 'nice' girls."

Lavender opened and closed her mouth several times. "Oh, God," she muttered. "Are you talking about Cheryl Ames?"

Hermione felt as though she'd been smacked in the face. "Cheryl Ames? Who's...Cheryl Ames?"

Lavender recovered enough to make a dismissive gesture. "Somebody's niece, I think. No one important. Molly and Arthur invited her to their annual open house. Ron thought Harry might like her. He was wrong. Of course, I had my doubts even before--oh. _Oh!_"

Now what? Hermione asked herself uneasily. The look on Lavender's face reminded her of the expression Scotty the waiter had worn as he'd puzzled out what was "going on" between her and Harry.

"Wait a minute," her former dormmate said. "Just wait a minute! That open house was in late July. It was after you and Harry had had your third so-called practice date and decided you'd better go back to being platonic pals." She stared at Hermione accusingly. "I _knew_ something was wrong with Harry! He was moping around the buffet table with the worst hangdog expression I've ever seen. And once he found out you weren't going to show up--"

"I had to floo to Miami," Hermione inserted hastily, trotting out the excuse she'd given Molly Weasley. "There was an agency emergency."

"One only you could handle, I suppose?" Lavender inquired in a sweetly sardonic tone, her black eyebrows arching toward her hairline.

"Well..." If the truth be told, which it wasn't going to be, the "emergency" could have been taken care of by any number of her agency colleagues. She'd volunteered for the job. Insisted on taking it, in fact.

"You didn't want to see him did you?"

Hermione sustained Lavender's challenging gaze as long as she could, then slumped against the canvas webbing of the director's chair. "Oh, I _wanted_," she admitted frankly, closing her eyes as a wave of yearning washed over her. "I just didn't know what to do about it."

There was a long pause. Finally Lavender said, "I gather you've had time to solve that particular problem."

Hermione opened her eyes and looked at her friend, thinking back to the answer Harry had given her when she'd asked him what friends did once they became lovers.

_Let's find out,_ he'd said.

"I'm working on it," she murmured.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognise does belong to me though.

**A.N- **I am so terribly sorry for updating so late. Life issues are such a bch! Plus, school had been hectic last semester and this one as well. I told you that I wasn't going to give up on this story. I've just been really busy, and now that I caught a little break, I'm able to update a little more. But yes, here's the latest chapter in the story. I hope none of you are upset with me. I'll make it up to you one way or another. On to it!

**Chapter 16:**

The month and a jalf that followed were one of the most complicated periods of Hermione's life.

Professionally, things couldn't have been better--or busier. In the space of just six weeks she landed two new accounts, won a major industry award and received both a promotion and a salary increase.

She also figured out a way to persuade the client from the planet of the morons that he was much too important to bother fussing with ad copy, thus advertising the possibility of another "zombie cola" type of disaster. This achievement netted her a performance bonus from the owner of her agency and a job offer from the client in question. She accepted the first, which she believed she definately deserved, and rejected the latter, which she wouldn't have wished on her worst enemy, with equal aplomb.

As for personal matters...

Well, in many ways Hermione was happier than she'd ever been. Happier than she'd ever imagined being, in fact. Nothing she'd experienced--nothing she'd fantasized--had prepared her for the potency of her involvement with Harry.

On the one hand, she and her best friend continued to share a closeness borne of more than two decades of friendship. They were at ease with each other's edges and idiosyncosies. She knew Harry almost as well as he knew himself and vice versa.

On the other hand, becoming lovers had added the spice of the unexpected to their longtime involvement. Physical intimacy had transformed the familiar into something fresh. For all their mutual knowledge, they still had some vital lessons to learn about each other.

Hermione found this combination of time-tempered understanding and new-found passion to be very heady stuff. Yet beneath the intoxication was a nagging sense of disappointment.

This disappointment was intermittant at first and relatively easy to ignore. It reminded Hermione--once she finally allowed herself to face up to it--of her response to a pair of comments Harry had made after they'd come together in an ecstatic frenzy against the front of her refrigerator.

_Oh, Hermione,_ he'd whispered, nuzzling his mouth against her neck. _You're so good for me._

_That wasn't luck,_ he'd interrupted later, when she'd tried to express how fortunate they'd been to be able to work out their postcoital uncertainties. _It was twenty years of shared history. We're _friends

There'd been nothing wrong with either of these statements. Indeed, there'd been much about them that Hermione had felt--and continued to feel--was wonderfully right. Nonetheless, she had to admit that they'd triggered an odd ache within her. Because as open as Harry's acknowledgement of his appreciation of her had been, a part of her had hungered for something else. For something..._more_.

As the heated bliss of the sizzling summer gave way to the cool of early autumn, Hermione's intermittent, easily ignorable sense of disappointment deepened into a profound dissatisfaction.

It wasn't that she didn't recognize the preciousness of what she had. She did! Had Hermione been asked to design her version of the perfect male-female relationship, the one she'd established with Harry would have been it. It was the intersection of two people who were complementary equals. And while it enriched her existance in more ways than she could articulate, it didn't impinge on the dependent life she'd worked so hard to make for herself.

It was everything she'd ever wanted.

_But it wasn't enough._

It wasn't enough because Hermione Jane Granger had fallen in love with Harry James Potter.

She'd also discovered that her fondest desire was to become his wife.

* * *

"How about here?" Harry asked, indicating what seemed to him to be a primely located pair of unoccupied seats.

"Fine," Hermione responded. Her tone was the verbal eqivalent of a shrug.

"We can go closer if you want." Harry scanned the rapidly filling movie theatre. The audience looked like a fairly typical Saturday-night-at-the multiplex crowd, he noted. There were lots of teenagers--some obviously paired off, many clustered in congenial packs. The twenty something set was well represented, too. There was also a liberal sprinkling of older couples and a few sit-alone singles. "The sound is better back here, but the screen in this place _is_ pretty small--"

"I _said_ these seats are _fine_, Harry. Let's just get settled, okay?"

"Okay," he concurred, struggling against the urge of irritation. He was only trying to be considerate! "Do you want the aisle?"

"Whatever, I don't care."

Great, he thought. Just great. He consulted Hermione about her preference and she claimed to be indifferent. But had he neglected to ask which seat she'd like, she undoubtedly would have accused him of attempting to have everything his way.

"Hermione--"

"You sit on the aisle," she snapped, brushing by him. The abruptness of her passage sent a flurry of kernels tumbling from the tub of popcorn he was holding in his left hand.

_What the hell is wrong with her?_ Harry wondered.

It was a question hed been asking himself with increasing frequency in recent days. His companion had been acting strangely for some time and he had no idea why.

He'd initially ascribed her moodiness to career-related stress. He'd been forced to abandon this diagnosis, however, when it had become obvious to him that far from flattering under the punishing burden of her post-Labor Day schedule, Hermione was thriving on it. She loved her work. It plainly meant the world to her.

He'd then begun wondering whether her uncharacteristic behavior was a reaction to the fact that their affair was no longer a secret. Although Ron's wife, Lavender, had stopped short of sending news releases through the Daily Prophet, she'd done a very effective job of spreading the word that he and her bouquet-catching former bridesmaid had-- to borrow a phrase from Scotty the waiter--"started up with each other".

While Harry didn't object to family members and friends knowing that he and Hermione were lovers, he _was_ annoyed by the apparently common assumption that the two of them eventually would end up at that alter. And if this sort of bedding-to-wedding expectation rubbed _him_ the wrong way, it seemed a sure bet to aggravate the heck out of his marriage-averse partner.

Except...it didn't. Aggravate the heck out of Hermione, that is. Although she certainly didn't encourage inquieres about possible bridal plans or hints about the benefits of marital bliss, Harry didn't sense that she was particularly troubled by them, either. Embarrassed, perhaps. Amused, quite probably. But troubled? Not that he could detect.

Which meant--what? he'd asked himself more times than he could count. That his best friend's attitude toward matrimony was changing and she wasn't sure what she wanted to do about it? That other peoples' beliefs about where the two of them were heading were beginning to influence her own?

Dear Merlin, he hoped not. Because as deeply as he cared for Hermione, the notion of his trading "I do's" with her was...was...well, it was preposterous! There was no way it could work. He knew how the fit between two made-to-be-married-for-life people should feel because he'd experienced it with Cho. And wonderful though it might be, the fit he felt with Hermione was a very different kind of connection.

As for the fit she felt with him...

Harry heard Hermione give a huffy little sigh. She was squirming in the seat she'd claimed for herself, her gaze fixed on the blank movie screen. Her expression was part sad, part sour and part something he couldn't identify.

Merlin, he thought suddenly, his gut knotting. What if Hermione was regretting their sexual involvement? What if she wanted to call it quits but couldn't figure out how to do it? What if that was the reason she'd been behaving so oddly?

No, he told himself fiercely. It couldn't be! No matter how difficult it was, Hermione and he had always been truthful with each other. If--_if_--shed decided that their becoming lovers was a mistake, she'd tell him.

Harry took a slow, steadying breath, still studying Hermione's profile.

"Popcorn?" he eventually offered. It wasn't quite an olive branch, but he had to make do with what was available."No, she refused brusquely. Then, after a moment, the taut line of her lips eased slightly. She slanted him a brief, sidward glance that had just a hint of apology in it. "Thank you."

He let a few seconds tick by. He wondered fleetingly whether Hermione might be in the grip of some sort of hormonal upheaval, but ruled out the notion of asking. Given her current mood, even the most diplomatic inquiry about whether this was her time of the month seemed likely to provoke an explosion.

"Hermione...what's wrong?" he finally asked, keeping his tone gentle.

Her features tightened again. Indeed, her entire body seemed to stiffen. "Nothing," she responded.

"Oh, right," he retorted, abandoning softness for sarcasm. While he was well aware that he was a long way from mastering the nuances contemporary male-female relationships, he damned well knew the difference between a sincere "Nothing" and one that was shorthand for "If you're so insensitive you can't figure out what's bothering me, I'm not going to tell you". The "nothing" he'd just gotten definately fell into the latter category.

This time Hermione didn't just glance at him. She actually turned her head and looked him squarely in the eye. "What makes you think there's something wrong, Harry?"

What made him think--

Harry clenched his hands into fists. Was she asking for a list of reasons?

"Well?" Hermione prodded, cocking her chin. Her silky, sable colored hair ripped back from her face.

Yes, she apparently was, he decided. Which was just fine and dandy with him. Because he was ready to cite chapter and verse. If he'd unwittingly offended her, he wanted to know about it so he could try to make amends. But if she was going off the deep end for some bizarre reason that had nothing to do with him, he was not going to take the blame for it!

"You've been acting weird for days," he told her bluntly.

Her chin racheted up another notch. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really." He nodded to emphasize th affirmation. "_Very_ weird. Not like the Hermione Granger I've known for the past twenty years."

His companion's brown eyes suddenly widened and sheened. Her throat began working convulsively. For one awful seemingly endless moment, Harry was afraid she was going to begin to cry. The possibility appalled him. A show of temper he could handle. But _tears_? From _Hermione_?

No, he prayed. Please, Merlin. No.

"Maybe the Hermione Granger you've known for the past twenty years has been a figment of your imagination," she said huskily, averting her face. "Did you ever think of that?"

A split second later the lights in the theatre went down. As they dimmed, the movie screen filled with a notice that the following preview had been approved for all viewing audiences.

"Hermione--" If she thought she could lob a verbal grenade like her last remark into the conversation and leave him to fall on it, she had another thing coming!

"Shh," she returned. "The movie's starting."

"It's just a trailer!"

Someone nearby made a shushing sound.

Harry gritted his teeth and tried again. "_Hermione_--"

"Be quiet!" another someone demanded loudly, prompting an angry chorus of shushes.

Hermione gave him a look that would have blistered paint. _See what you've done_? it seemed to accuse.

Harry subsided into seething silence. It was either that or jump up and stalk out of the theatre--preferably dragging Hermione along behind him by the scruff of the neck.

Slumping in his seat he grabbed a fistful of popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth. Up on the movie screen, an expensive sports car had just careened of a cliff and exploded in a great ball of fire. The trailer's narrator was intoning something about somebody having a bad day.

Harry James Potter could relate to that.

_Maybe the Hermione Granger you've known for the past twenty years has been a figment of your imagination,_ she'd said. _Did you ever think of that?_

What was that supposed to mean?

Up on the movie screen, the somebody who allegedly was having the bad day was blowing up the headquarters of the people who apparently were responsible for his misfortunes.

Harry James Potter could relate to that, too.


	18. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognise does belong to me though.

**A.N- **I wouldn't even know how to begin apologizing for the break between updates. I'm not going to even get into it...just to many issues to go over. Just know that I had promised my readers that I wouldn't abandon this story, and I'm holding to that promise. Here's the next chapter. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 17: **

"So you _did_ manage to make up with him," Ginevra Molly Weasley concluded four days later.

"More or less," Hermione said, searching her meager stock of cooking supplies with an escalating sense of dismay. The recipe she intended to make called for cinnamon, mace and ginger. While she'd located a small cache of the first spice, the second and third were nowhere to be found. A quick glance at her wristwatch told her it was too late to make a run to the supermarket. "But I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd stayed angry with me. I mean, I was really awful, Ginny. You have no idea."

"I went to school with you," came the dry reminder from the other end of the telephone line. "I think I have a vague notion of how bitchy you can be."

Hermione grimaced, slamming shut the cabinet she'd been rummaging through and yanking open the one next to it. "I'm not talking about P.M.S."

"I know." There was a soft, sympathetic sigh. Then came the quiet but unequivocal assertion," You can't let things go on like this, Hermione. You have to tell Harry how you feel."

"That's what you said last time."

"Back when you thought what was happening between the two of you was just physical, you mean?"

The choice of words flicked Hermione on the raw. Knowing Ginny, she assumed this was intentional. Her mind jumped back to the conversation she and her friend had had on a Saturday morning many weeks ago.

_Supposing...supposing I _did_ tell him, _she'd been goaded into hypothesizing. _Supposing I said, "Harry, I'm attracted to you." What if he didn't say it back, Ginny? Even worse, what if I said it and he told me he _wasn't?_ Or what if...if--Oh, Merlin! I sound like a fifteen-year-old in the throes of an unrequitted crush! _

_How can you be sure it's a crush? _her all-too-perceptive friend had countered after a long silence. _Or that it's unrequitted?_

Hermione stiffened, conscious of a sudden tightening in her chest. "Yes," she concurred, forcing the word out. "That's what I mean."

"Well, if telling the truth has worked in the past..."

"This is different!"

"How?"

"It just is."

Still no mace or ginger. Disgusted, Hermione jerked open a drawer and scowled at its jumbled contents. Somewhere in the back of her mind a nasty little voice offered the nasty little observation that the late Cho Potter probably had never had to search her kitchen for anything. No doubt Cho had always kept her pantry fully stocked and impeccably organized.

_But Cho didn't have a full time career,_ another--infinitely nicer-- voice observed.

_And Harry liked that, didn't he? _the nasty voice countered. _He _liked_ having an old-fashioned, stay-at-home wife who cooked and cleaned and cooed._

"You say you've fallen in love with him," Ginny said.

Hermione closed her eyes. A wave of longing surged through her. "Yes," she whispered.

"And you want to be his wife?"

"Y-yes," she whispered again. Oh, yes. She wanted that more than anything else in the world. If only...

"Then tell him."

Hermione opened her eyes. She banged the clutter-filled drawer shut. "Not yet. I _can't._"

"You won't."

Hermione shook her head, wondering how she could explain to someone else the emotional confusion she couldn't adequately explain to herself. Yes, she was in love with Harry, and yes, she wanted to be his wife. But to come right out and tell him?

There'd been a time when she could have told her best friend anything. A time when she'd been able to bare her soul to him. By all rights, the intimacies they'd shared since the end of August should have enhanced the openess that existed between them. Only they hadn't.

"Don't you understand?" she asked, feeling more than a little bit desperate. "I've spent my entire adult life not wanting to get married!"

"So?" Ginny sounded impatient, as though doing an aboutface on the issue of matrimony was no big deal. "You've finally met the right man and you've changed your mind. That's nothing to be ashamed of. You're entitled."

"I've finally met--Ginny, for Merlin's sake! I've known Harry Potter for more than twenty years!"

"Well, maybe he didn't become the right man until recently."

The assertions stopped Hermione cold. It ran counter to what she'd always unthinkingly accepted as a fundamental romantic truth. Specifically, that the right person was the right person, at once and forever.

And yet...

People grew, she reminded herself. They adopted. They adjusted. They altered. Perhaps their "rightness" for other people did so, too.

"Then again," Ginny went on reflectively, "maybe you needed those more than twenty years to become the right woman."

The doubts Hermione had been battling since the kiss Harry had given her at the end of their third practice date suddenly coalesced to assail her, full force. "Assuming I am," she muttered.

"Assuming you are what?"

Hermione hesitated for an instant, then laid it on the line. "The right woman."

There was a long pause on the other end. Then, carefully, "For Harry, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Hermione--"

"Think about it, Ginny." The words came tumbling out. "There's no question what kind of marriage partner Harry would be. He's already been one. He was a wonderful husband to Cho. And she...she was a wonderful wife to him. A perfect wife! But _me_? Can you imagine what kind of wife _I'd_ be?"

There was another long pause.

"For a man you loved and who loved you back, I'd imagine you'd be the best wife you could," Ginny finally replied. "And that means your husband would be one very lucky guy."

The conviction in her friend's musical voice nearly undid Hermione. For a few moments she thought she might actually break down and weep.

"Oh, sure." She gulped, blinking against the stinging threat of impending tears. "Unless...unless he happened to l-like ginger or m-mace."

"I beg your pardon?"

Hermione sniffed, bringing herself under control. "Tomorrow's Thursday, right?"

"Last time I checked."

"Well, Harry and I are having dinner over at your parent's tomorrow. Ron and Lavender are also going to be there."

"Don't tell me you volunteered to cook the whole meal."

"I'm not crazy, Ginny!"

"No, you're in love, which may very well be worse. Especially when it comes to demonstrations of domesticity."

Hermione winced at her friend's acuteness. While she wasn't about to turn herself into a happy homemaker for anyone, including Harry, there was no denying that she felt an overwhelming need to prove that she knew her way around a kitchen. That her culinary skills could not match Cho's was not the point. Showing that she was capable of doing more than microwaving pizzas and making dinner reservations was.

"I said I'd fix something with sweet potatoes," she confessed.

"Hence the referee to ginger and mace a few minutes ago?"

"Yes."

"I gather you don't have any."

"I'd go out and buy some, but all the food shops have closed up early."

"Mmm." Hermione sensed a shift into the social secretary mode. "The lack of spices aside, what's this 'something' you're planning to fix with sweet potatoes?"

"I found the recipe in the newspaper last week. It's a casserole, with apples and chestnuts. Only...well, the list of ingrediants included vacuum-packed roasted chestnuts and all I could find were marron glaces. Since I didn't think chestnuts in sugar syrup would work, I bought walnuts instead."

"What about liquor?"

"You're advising me to get drunk?"

A laugh rippled down the line. "Maybe later. I was asking whether there's liquor in this casserole of yours."

"I don't think so."

"Do you have any dark rum?"

Hermione frowned, mentally reviewing her liquor supply. "Uh, yes. I brought back a bottle from the duty free shop at the airport a few years ago when I went to the Carribean."

"Terrific. All you have to do is pour a big shot of it into your casserole before you put it in to bake. I guarantee no one will miss the mace or ginger."

Hermione had to smile. "Is that the secret of Mrs. Ogden's success as a hostess? Adding alcohol to the food?"

"One of them," Ginny acknowledged. "Of course, having a five-star chef on staff doesn't hurt."

"I can imagine."

"I, uh, don't suppose you ever considered having someone help you with this sweet potato thing?"

"You mean, did I think about getting it prepared by some professional caterer, then passing it off as my own?"

"Exactly."

"Of course I considered it." Hermione massaged the nape of her neck. "But...well, let's just say that underspiced, overboozed and improvised-with-walnuts though this casserole may be, it's important that it's mine. Don't ask me why--"

"I know why," Ginny interrupted firmly. "And so do you. It's Harry who deserves to be clued in."

Resentment flared, fueled by a sense of insecurity that gnawed at the very core of Hermione's belief in herself. "He didn't need to be clued in with Cho."

"Cho was Cho. You are you." A sigh heaved through the line. "Look, Hermione, I know you're confused. It's not easy dwelling with the realization that what you want from life--what you need from other people--is subject to change. You've spent a lot of years viewing yourself as an independent go-it-alone career woman. Discovering you have a yen for white lace and orange blossoms must be...unsettling."

"There are moments when I'm afraid that wanting what I want with Harry might mean I'm betraying who I am," Hermione confessed painfully. "Or at least, who I've always thought I was."

"You haven't," Ginny assured her. "You couldn't! You're one of the most honest people I've ever known. So...if you've got some cockeyed conviction that the way to Harry's heart is through his stomach, go for it. But once he's recovered from the indigestion, do what you've always done. _Tell your best friend the truth._"

* * *

It was shortly before dusk on the Saturday after having dinner at the Weasley's. Harry James Potter was sitting at the table in Hermione Jane Granger's kitchen feasting on leftovers and feeling pretty good about his life.

The difficulties between him and Hermione seemed to have been sorted out. This was not to imply that he completely understood what those difficulties had been. He didn't. But given that the situation appeared to have resolved itself, he'd decided not to press for explanations. Deep in his heart of hearts--in that primitively masculine part of him that still regarded most members of the opposite sex with a mixture of tetosterone--tainted awe and utter bewilderment--he'd chalked up Hermione's behavior to some sort of "female" thing.

He didn't get it.

In point of fact, he suspected he'd probably never get it.

But as long as Hermione was all right with whatever had been wrong, he wasn't going to rock the boat.

"Harry?"

"Mmph?" he responded a mouthful of reheated sweet potato casserole. As good as the dish had been at the Weasley dinner, forty-eight hours of mellowing in the refrigerator had transmuted it into something close to ambrosia. And potent? Who'd have thought that the yellow gold tuber Mrs. Weasley usually served within a topping of mini marshmellows could pack such a flavourable punch!

Maybe it was the walnuts, he speculated.

There was no denying that he'd approached Hermione's contribution to the dinner table with a trace of trepidition. It wasn't that he lacked confidence in her culinary competence. He whole heartedly believed she could cook up a cordon bleu storm if she set her mind to it. But the fact was, she'd elected to direct her energies elsewhere. Which was fine with him, because it was his firm conviction that a woman's place was in the kitchen only if that's where she chose to be.

He hadn't really tasted the first bite he'd taken. The incredibly anxious look he'd seen in Hermione's eyes had caused his throat to close up so tightly he'd had to choke it down. By the time he ferried a second forkful to his lips, several of the other diners had already delivered verdicts.

_This is wonderful, Hermione._

_Absolutely delicious._

_Dear, you must give me--_

"Harry, there's something I need to tell you."

He blinked, focusing on the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman sitting opposite him. "So tell me," he invited after a moment, giving her an easy smile.

She didn't smile back. But she did lick her lips. For a split second Harry read the darting movement of provocation, then he realized it was prompted by nervousness.

His smile contracted.

"Hermione?" he asked, leaning forward.

"I want to get married."

Harry dropped his fork. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor. "To whom?"

It was an unforgivably stupid response. He understood that the instant the words left his lips. Hell, he understood it as he felt the words forming in his brain and flowing out of his mouth._ But what was he supposed to say?_

Hermione didn't answer his question. She just stared at him.

"All the years I've known you," Harry said, forcing himself to meet her gaze. "You've never wanted marriage to...to anybody."

"I've changed my mind." Her lashes flicked down for a second, then lifted. "People do that, you know."

"But..._why?_"

He saw her tremble then. After a moment she straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. "Because I'm in love with you, Harry."

His heart seemed to stop. His breath seemed to clog at the tope of his throat. He went cold then hot then cold again and his heart started to swim.

"You--you never said--" he began hoarsely.

"Maybe I was waiting for you to go first."

There was a long pause. Sometime during the coarse of it, Harry's heart started beating again and he recovered his ability to exhale.

"You must...you must know how I feel," he faltered, his tone vacillating between an apology he wasn't certain he owed and an accusation he recognized he had no right to make. But even as he spoke, he saw in his lover's eyes that she _didn't_ know. That she _wouldn't_ know unless he said the words aloud.

And so, belatedly, he did.

There was another pause.

"But not enough to marry me, right?" Hermione finally asked, pushing herself away from the table. There was an air of finality to the movement. Or maybe it was the calm before the storm.

Harry shook his head. "It's not like that. Love isn't something you can quantify--"

"You married Cho."

He flinched at the reference to his dead wife. "That's...different."

"Why?" She demanded. "Why is it different, Harry?"

"Because--"

"Why?" she goaded again. Then suddenly, something seemed to snap. She surged to her feet, her eyes dangerously bright. "Is it because you don't love me the same way you loved her?"

There was a disastrous silence.

Harry put an end to it by telling the truth. Whether this was an act of kindness or cruelty, he couldn't say. He only knew that the characteristic directness of her question allowed for no evasion.

"Yes," he said simply.

Hermione turned away.

Compelled by emotions he didn't comprehend, Harry rose and moved to where she was standing. He hesitated for a moment, then placed his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened at the contact, but didn't try to pull away.

"I'm sorry," he began. "I didn't mean--"

She pivoted back to face him. "Yes," she countered evenly. "You did. And as much as it hurt, I'm glad you were honest."

He gazed down for an aching interval of time, conscious of a gradual acceleration in his pulse and a deepening in the pattern of his breathing. Hermione's proximity was part of it. The tantalizing scent of her skin and hair. The war temptation of her flesh. An undercurrent of volatile emotionalism contributed to his response, as well.

"Hermione," he said finally, his voice husky, his body beginning to throb. He stroked his hands up her arms. "Oh, Hermione."

She lifted her right hand, placing her palm against his chest. "No," she said.

Although his fingers stilled against her flesh, he didn't let go. "But..."

"No," she repeated, shaking her head. Her face had gone milky pale. Her eyes were huge and dark. "I can't...be...with you anymore, Harry."

It took him a few moments to understand what she was telling him. The fury he felt once he did, left him temporarily bereft of speech. "No marriage, no..." he finally rasped, summarizing her apparent ultimatum in the crudest possible terms.

For an instant he thought Hermione would lash out at him. In an awful way, he wished she would. But then, with palpable effort, she controlled herself.

"I want you to leave," she said.

"Fine by me," he responded. "Because there sure as hell isn't any reason for me to stay."


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognise does belong to me though.

**A.N- **I'm really psyched that you all liked the last chapter. I couldn't believe on how many reviews I received. That was totally awesome and I love you all for it. I'm hoping you enjoy this one, too.

**Chapte 18:**

After nearly three weeks of nothing but stony silence from Harry, Hermione had pretty much disciplined her heart to stop leaping into her throat every time someone called or knocked on her door. Nonetheless, she couldn't quell a pulse-scrambling surge of hope when her bedside phone shrilled shortly before 11:00 p.m. on the third Friday in December.

She'd been watching a network news magazine show on the television that sat on an armoire positioned against the wall opposite the end of her bed. Well, actually, "watching" was a bit of an overstatement. It implied she was absorbing at least some of what she was seeing. Staring at the screen in a semi-numbed state was closer to the mark.

She snatched up the receiver with a shaking hand on the second ring.

"Hello?" she said into the mouthpiece, searching in the bed linen for the remote control device.

"Hermione?"

"Oh." She swallowed hard, her spirits collapsing like a house of cards. A split second later she found the remote control. She depressed the mute button, killing the audio from the TV. "Ginny."

"I realized it's late," her friend said apologetically. "But I had to phone. I just heard."

There was no need for Ginny to elaborate on what she'd heard or from whom she'd heard it. The gravity with which she'd uttered the last three words said it all.

"You just heard?" Hermione frowned. Lavender had ferreted out the news about her breakup with Harry a scant seventy-two hours after it had occured. She'd assumed the information had been passed along to Ginny a short time later.

In point of fact, she'd been wondering why her Canterbury-based friend hadn't been in touch. Not that she'd been looking forward to yet another round of evading questions about what had happened between her and Harry. She hadn't. She'd been given the third degree by quite enough people, thank you very much. Even Scotty, the Rio Bravo waiter, had felt it necessary to weigh in with a few pointed inquiries several nights ago when she'd impulsively stopped by for a bite to eat after a very long day at work.

Still, if anyone could be said to have a right to probe into what had gone so disastrously wrong, Hermione supposed it would be Ginevra Molly Weasley. Her failure to follow up on their pre-dinner heart-to-heart had seemed out of character.

"I've been in Switzerland," came the quiet response. "I got back about ninety minutes ago. There was a message from Lavender on my machine. I called her, then I called you."

Hermione blinked, startled by the first part of this explanatioin. Ginny? In Switzerland? How was that possible? The last thing she'd heard, her former schoolmate had decided to underscore her renunciation of her rootless past by letting her passport lapse.

"Is there a problem with your grandparents?" she asked after a moment, shoving aside her own emotional malaise.

"My grandparents?" Ginny sounded surprised. "No. They're fine. My grandfather's in Tokyo visiting with his old colleagues. My grandmother's someplace in the amazon rain forest doing whatever nonsencsical happenings she does. The last word I got they were planning a Christmas rendezvous in Venice. Or maybe Paris. Then again, they may decide to meet in some tiny tribal village in Vanuata. What made you think there might be a problem?"

"You've been so adament about staying put in Canterbury," Hermione replied, sinking back against the pillows she'd stacked at the head of her bed. "I just assumed it would take some sort of family emergency to get you to leave the island."

"Yes, well, I'm still adament about wanting to stay put. This trip was a one-time-only deal. Mrs. Ogden had to go to Zunich for a ceremony honoring her first husband. The friend who was supposed to acompany her took ill very suddenly. She insisted I fill in."

"And when Arietta Martel von Helsing Flynn Ogden insists, mere mortals must obey?"

"Something like that." A weary laugh came through the line. "I think she conned one of the officers working under her into arranging to have my passport renewed."

"What, she didn't enlist the Prime Minister to pull the necessary strings?"

"She probably had him standing by in case there were any glitches." Ginny sighed. "Anyway." She sighed a second time. "Getting back to the reason I called. Is what Lavender told me true? Have you and Harry really split up."

Hermione shifted against the pillows, feeling a bit like a butterfly on a pin. "Yes."

"Oh, Hermione." The response was rich with sympathy. Although clearly meant to soothe, it affected Hermione like salt in an open wound. "I'm sorry."

"No, need," Hermione said after a moment. "Everything's all right." The lie was as much for herself as for her friend. Perhaps if she repeated it often enough, she'd start to believe it.

"_All right?_" The shocked sounding question was followed by a shaky inhalation of breath. When Ginny finally resumed speaking, it was in a carefully modulated manner. She seemed to be testing each word silently before speaking it aloud. "Lavender wasn't very clear about why you and Harry broke up. Was it because...I mean, did you...did you _tell_ him?"

Hermione understood instantly what was being asked and why. "It's not your fault, Ginny."

"Oh, Merlin." A groan. "You did. You told Harry about being in love with him and wanting to be his wife. I said you should and you did!"

"It was _my _decision," Hermione countered unequivocally. "_My_ choice. The advice you gave me--well, as much as I tried to deny it when I talked to you, I knew what I had to do. You might have speeded up the truth--telling process a little, but that's all. You're not responsible for what I said or how I said it."

There was a long, painful pause.

"So...Harry doesn't want to get married again?" Ginny finally asked.

Hermione gazed fixedly at the televsion set. A seemingly endless list of credits were scrolling up at the screen. They might have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense she was able to make of them.

"No," she confirmed, then backpedaled slightly in the interests of being totally honest. "Not to me, anyway."

"Maybe he just needs more time."

Hermione's vision blurred for an instant. Her throat tightened.

"No," she repeated. This time she didn't feel compelled to qualify the negative.

She'd considered what Ginny was suggesting, of course. Indeed, once she'd survived the initial rush of anger and hurt, a fundamental sense of fairness had forced her to wonder whether the sundering of her relationship with Harry might have been avoided if she'd been less precipitous in revealing her feelings. After much anguished reflection she'd decided that her timing probably had made little difference in determining what had finally happened.

Yes, she conceded to herself, she could have handled things better than she had. But would doing so have altered the ultimate outcome?

Not likely.

Not likely at all.

Had Harry felt a need to sort through his emotions before sharing them with her, he could have deferred his response to her confession that she was in love with him and wanted to be his wife. And as difficult as waiting for his answer would have been, she would have done it.

But he hadn't defered his response. When push had come to shove, her best friend had laid everything on the line...just as she had done.

Yes, he loved her.

But not the way he'd loved Cho.

And not enough to commit to her as a husband.

"Lavender said she didn't think you two were even speaking to each other anymore," Ginny observed after a few seconds.

"We're not," Hermione replied, steeling herself against what had become an all familiar ache of physical frustration. She felt the tips of her breasts stiffen yearningly against the fabric of her nightgown.

Oh, Harry, she thought.

_No marriage, no..._he'd demanded of her twenty days ago.

She hadn't intended her confession of love to be the prelude to a sexual ultimatum. At least, not consciously. Yet that's what it had turned out to be. For both of them.

She'd been wrong to be afraid that her longing for marriage with Harry represented some sort of betrayal. Hermione realized that now. What she should have feared was that she might be tempted into settling for being his bed partner when what she wanted with all her heart was to be his bride.

That such a "settling" would have been intensely pleasurable, she had no doubt. But the cost of that pleasure would have been the diminishment of the woman she'd become when she'd finally and fully accepted the life-altering implications of her feelings for the man she'd always called friend.

"Not at _all?_" Ginny pressed. "The two of you have been close for twenty years! How can you cut yourself off from that kind of history?"

Hermione bit her lip and shut her eyes, suddenly recalling the last thing Harry had said to her before he'd left her condo. As hurtful as his comment about there being no reason for him to want to remain with her had been, his parting shot had done even more damage.

_I think this is the point where one of us is supposed to suggest we can still be friends, _he'd declared, his posture stiff, his expression shuttered. _Let's forgo the hypocrosy and admit the truth. We can't._

"Harry and I decided to make a clean break," she said, opening her eyes. Her gaze drifted toward the television. The late edition of the news was just coming on. She wondered fleetingly what type of ill-tiding would lead the broadcast. "It seemed best, all things considered."

There was another pause on Ginny's end. Then suddenly asked, "What are you doing for the holidays?"

"The...the holidays?"

"Christmas and New Year's. Could you get some time off from work?"

Hermione fiddled with the bedsheets. If truth be told, her boss had been urging her to take a vacatioin for some time. His initial pitch had centered on the notion that she "deserved" a break after all she'd accomplished for the agency. Recently, however, he'd begun hinting that he believed she genuinely needed to get away from the office.

Although it pained her to do so, Hermione had to concede that this assessment of her condition was right on the money. She was stressed out. Her job had seemed like a lifeline in the stormy wake of her split with Harry and she'd been clinging to it with desperate determination. Yet for all the extra hours she'd been putting in, she knew she'd been getting very little done.

"I suppose I could take a few comp days," she acknowledged.

"Great. I want you to come to Canterbury and stay with me through the first of the year."

Hermione was taken aback. "N-no," she stammered, shaking her head. "Oh, Ginny. No. I mean, I really don't think--"

"Well, I really do." The assertion had a stainless-steel-fist-in-a-lace-trimmed-glove quality. The sort of quality one would expect from Arietta Martel von Helsing Flynn Ogden's social secretary. "Getting away from London will do you a lot of good."

"The only thing that will do me a lot of good is--"Hermioine broke off abruptly, her attention diverted to the TV set by what appeared to be a live shot of a newsreporter named Trent Barnes bird-dogging Judge Talcott Emerson the Third's departure from the rear exit of a hotel.

"Hermione?" Ginny questioined from the other end of the line.

"Hold on a moment." She fumbled for the remote control as she attempted to make sense of the silent drama unfolding before her eyes. It looked like a classic, ambush-style attempt to get an interview from an unwilling subject. But why?

"Hermione?" Ginny repeated sharply. "What's going on?"

"I'm trying to find out."

She located the remote control a second later. At the exact same instant Talcott Emerson the Third turned to confront his news-chasing nemesis.

Hermione hit the volume button and held it down. The Judge's voice blared out of the television set.

"For slandering the woman I love!" he cried dramatically, then hauled back his arm and punched Trent Barnes in the nose with a stunning right cross.

It was a total knockout. Trent staggered backward a step before collapsing in a senseless heap, his arm outstretched, his nostrils gushing blood.

"Oh my God," Hermione whispered, the remote control slipping from her fingers.

"What's happening?" Ginny demanded.

Hermione cleared her throat, still staring at the TV. "Well, Ginny," she began. "Your former almost fiance just decked out a local reporter."

There was a gasp from the other end of the line.

"He did it live," she continued. "On the eleven o'clock news."

"Are you talking about...Talcott Emerson?"

"Uh-huh. Forget the beige aura. He's drawn blood."

"But, Merlin. _Why?_"

The image on the screen changed. A gory close-up of Trent Barne's shattered nose was replaced by a videotaped of a buxom blonde sachaying across a stage wearing high heels, a swimsuit and a rhinestone tiara.

The woman he loves, Hermione thought with a strange pang of emotion.

"I think it has to do with an ex-beauty queen named Belinda Reese," she informed her friend after several singularly unsettled seconds.

"Belinda Reese? I-I've never heard of her."

"She's better known as Honey Chile." Hermione paused for a bit, then made a sudden decision about the invitation-cum-order Ginny had issued earlier. "Don't worry. I'll give you all the dirt when I get to Canterbury."


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognise does belong to me though.

**A.N- **I'm so happy from all the reviews I received from the last chapter. I'm really glad you guys are enjoying this story. And look at this: I'm updating the next chapter so soon! I know you guys will be happy. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 19:**

Harry James Potter reacted to his first glimpse of the color photographs on the front page of the _London times_ the way he'd reacted to so many other things since the Saturday after the dinner at the Weasley's.

What, he wondered as he stared at the series of slightly blurry, shot-from-a-TV-screen image that dominated his morning paper, would Hermione say about this?

The question still nagged at him twelve hours after the first glimpse. The day's _London Times_ had long since been relegated to a recycling bin. Morning had long since given way to afternoon, and then to evening.

Harry was sitting at a table in his favorite Mexican restaurant, skimming the newspaper account of Talcott Emerson the Third's "assault" on Trent Barnes. Unlike the _London Times_, the magazine that touted itself as providing all the news that was fit to print had published only one photograph of the incident. It had also chosen to supplement its coverage with a lengthy editorial essay denying the impact of "tabloid trends" on mainstream journalism.

Harry could imagine how Hermione would react to that particular piece of prose. It reeked of the kind of highbrow pomposity she'd always taken great satisfaction in--

_Stop it,_ he ordered himself as he realized what he was doing. _Just stop thinking about her!_

Oh, yeah, he mocked a moment later. Sure. No problem. And once he succeeded in obliterating Hermione from his consciousness--perhaps with the help of a frontal lobotomy?--he'd kick back and teach himself to fly without the aid of his broom.

Harry closed his eyes.

They'd had so much together, he reflected painfully. Why had she pushed for more? Why, after a lifetime of indifference to it, had she suddenly pushed for marriage? And why in God's name had she pushed for it in a way thaI't had left him no alternative but to retaliate with the truth?

_I'm in love with you, Harry,_ she'd said.

Well, he was in love with her, too, dammit! Even now. Even after she'd rejected him sexually in a bid to bring him to his knees. The problem was, the love he had for her wasn't the kind of love she wanted. What she would wanted--or thought she wanted--was for him to feel for her what he'd felt for Cho.

That was something he couldn't do. Not wouldn't. _Couldn't!_

Harry was willing to concede that Hermione knew the answers to a lot of questions about contemporary male-female relations he'd never thought to ask. But when it came to understanding the lightening bolt that signaled--

"Well, he's definitely gettin' my vote in the next election," a familiar male voice announced.

Startled, Harry opened his eyes and looked up into the face of Scotty, the waiter. "Wh-what?"

"Judge Emerson," the pony-tailed server replied, plunking a menu, a basket of tortilla wedges and a bowl of salsa on top of Harry's open newspaper. His manner was careless to the point of being rude. "Any guy who punches out a reporter in the name of love is my kind of politician."

"Oh." Harry noted the absense of the long-necked bottle of beer Scotty usually delivered to the table with the complementary chips and dip. He had the distinct feeling the omission was not accidental. "I see."

The comment provoked a small but unmistakable snort. "I'll just bet you do."

Harry stiffened. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Two people I used to enjoy serving as a couple have started eating solo," Scotty responded flatly, his normally genial expression taking on a decidely pugrocious cast. "What do you think it means?"

Harry's pulse stuttered as the possible implications of the waiter's words sank in. His heart seemed to skip a beat. He had to fight to fill his lungs with air.

"Are you saying Hermione's...here?" he finally managed to ask. "Now?"

It was foolish of him to inquire and he knew it. It was even more foolish of him to hope for an affirmative answer. He knew that, too. Hermione's presense in this restaurant wouldn't altar what had passed between them, nor heal the hurt they'd inflicted on each other. What they'd had was over. Done with. Finished. Through. He'd put a period to it a moment before he'd walked out of her condo three weeks ago.

_I think this is the point where one of us is supposed to suggest we can still be friends. Lets forgo the hypocracy and admit the truth. We can't_

"Not tonight," the waiter said, sounding genuinely regretful. His face softened. "She was in Monday. Kind of late. She had bunch of files with her. Like from work."

"She was...by herself?"

"Absolutely." Scotty bobbed his head for emphasis. The polished gold stud in his earlobe glinted.

"How did she look?"

A hesitation. Then cautiously, "You want the truth?"

Harry's memory flashed back to his final encounter with Hermione.

_I'm sorry,_ he'd begun, seeking a way to ameliorate his admission that he didn't love her the way he'd loved Cho. _I didn't mean--_

_Yes, you did, _she'd interrupted, her voice steady, her chin angled up._ And as much as it hurt, I'm glad you were honest._

"Yeah," he told the waiter. "I want the truth."

"She looked almost as bad as you do."

Harry winced inwardly. After a moment he shifted his gaze back to the black-and-white photograph in the newspaper. The caption said something about a conflict between private passions and the public's right to know.

"Do you want to order now?" Scotty inquired.

Harry shrugged, tracing the edge of the picture. "I'm not very hungry."

"She--Hermione--said that, too. She told me to surprise her."

Harry looked up again, brows lifted. "And did you?"

The beefy waiter showed his pearly white teeth. "Let's just say I didn't bring her quesadillas."

Scotty didn't bring Harry quesadillas, either.

He "surprised" him with a sizzling platter of chicken _fajitas._


	21. Chapter 21

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of the Harry Potter series. Anything that you do not recognise does belong to me though.

**A.N. **I just want to apologize about the delay of this chapter. I know alot of you guys have reviewed and were concerned about this story. And I was very touched by your reviews. Alot of you guys were talking about how Harry was cruel and shallow on how he handled the whole situation with Hermione and how she shoudl grovel and beg his forgiveness to her. And I feel as if I should be doing the same with all of you because you guys are still sticking with me and I truly appreciate it. Her's the next chapter. Please enjoy!

**A.A.N-** And another thing, too...I was trying to rush to bring this chapter out, so if there are alot of errors I apologize.

* * *

**Chapter 20:**

Ron Weasley stormed into his best friend's corner office slightly more than two weeks later, on the second day of January.

"All right," he said without preamble, slamming the office door and marching over to Harry's paper-strewn desk. "I kept my mouth shut during the holidays because I figured you were getting all the hassle about your private life you could handle from other people. But it's a brand new year and I'm through being considerate. So answer me this and answer it now. _What the hell is going on between you and Hermione?"_

Harry finished jotting down some information before he glanced up from his paperwork. "Nothing," he said quietly.

"Oh, right." The retort was scathingly sarcastic. "That's why she ran off to Canterbury to visit my sister and why you've been moping around London like somebody shot your favorite dog!"

Harry took a deep breath, held it for a few steadying seconds, then released it in a long, hissing sigh. "I didn't say there's never been anything between us," he acknowledged in a carefully controlled voice. "You asked about the present."

"I saw you together at the dinner at my parents house, Harry," Ron countered, his tone intense, his features taut. "We could have incinerated the whole dinner with the heat you two were giving off!"

"Temperatures cool. Things change."

His best friend dismissed these assertions with a barnyard doscenity.

Harry averted his gaze. He'd seen this confrontation coming, of course. And although part of him had dreaded it, another part had recognized that he desperately needed to talk to someone. Unfortunately, the maco code of suffering in silence was damned hard to break.

Except with Hermione. He'd spilled his guts to her more times than he could count during the past two decades. But she was off limits as a confidante now, in every possible sense.

"What does your wife have to say?" he asked after a few moments, forcing himself to meet his friend's questioning eyes once again.

"Lavender?" Ron pulled a face. "Not much."

Harry lifted his brows, a sense of alarm prickling up his spine. The last thing he wanted to hear was that his best friend and his wife were having marital problems. "The two of you aren't talking?"

"Not about you and Hermione." Ron grimaced a second time and raked a hand through his hair. "I don't know whether it's because I'm your friend and she doesn't want me to get caught in the emotional cross fire or whether she's locked into some kind of all-men-are-slime mode and doesn't want to discuss the situation with me on principle. Whatever the case, my wife and I are experiencing a temporary failure to communicate."

There was a pause.

"I'm...sorry," Harry finally said.

Ron gestured the expression of sympathy aside with a brusque wave as he stepped back and sat down in the chair in front of Harry's desk.

"Forget it," he replied. "Just fill me in on your version of what's wrong. I figure Lavender's already had an earful directly from Hermione--or secondhand from Ginny. When she finally decides to open up, which she eventually will, I want to be ready to defend you."

Harry had to smile. "I appreciate the loyalty, Ron."

"And I appreciate being appreciated. Now tell me what happened."

Another pause. Then, "Did you and Hermione develop some kind of trouble in bed?" Ron asked with sledghammer directness.

"Wh-what?" Harry could barely get the question out. Of all the explanations his friend could have picked--_trouble in bed?_

"Look, I know sexual problems can be tough to talk about," Ron forged on, seemingly oblivious to the shocked reaction his inquiry had provoked. "But I promise you, Harry, opening up helps. Remember a couple of years back when the fertility specialists were putting me through all those tests because Lavender wasn't getting pregnant? Do you think it was easy for me to tell you my sperm count came back way below average? Or that what few sperm I have apparently won't move unless you poke 'em with a cattle prod? Hell no! The truth stuck in my craw. I was afraid you'd start thinking of me as less than a man if you knew. But once I finally found the guts to share--"

"Dammit, Ron!" Harry exploded. "Sex isn't what split Hermione and me up!"

The silence that followed this outburst wasn't so much another pause in the conversation as a full-scale break.

"Uh, it wasn't?" Ron eventually responded, easing back in his chair.

"No," Harry said, his tone considerably more moderate than it had been. He swalloed hard, recalling his last encounter with Hermione. The accusation of sexual blackmail he'd made echoed through his mind with cruel clarity. "At least, not the way you mean."

"I don't understand."

Harry shifted uncomfortably, relunctant to reveal the ugliness that had prompted his caveat. "Let's just say our love life was terrific as long as it lasted," he declared, then shifted a second time as his memory skipped further back along the time line of his relationship with Hermione. Again memory goaded him into offering a qualification. "And...once I got over a few hangups."

Hangups?" Ron went after the word like a bird dog on point.

"I had some...difficulty dealing with Hermione's, uh, experience."

"You brought up her past?"

Harry stiffened, stung by his friend's righteously outraged tone. Instinct told him to attack and he did. "Tell me _you _never had problems knowing there were men in Lavender's life before she got together with you," he challenged. "Come on. Tell me!"

Ron remained silent for several seconds then exhaled on a heavy sigh. "I can't," he admitted ruefully.

"Then where the hell do you get off judging me?"

"Hey, just because I've occasionally acted like a jealous jerk doesn't mean I'm not entitled to hope my friend will avoid the same behavior."

Harry took a moment or two to digest this. 'Oh," he finally replied, wishing he'd tempured his previous reaction just a tad. He gestured. "Well,...I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"I'll survive." Ron thrust his fingers back through his hair again. "I gather you got over it."

"Huh?"

"The jealous jerkiness."

"Oh, yeah." Harry nodded, remembering the morning-after episode in Hermione's kitchen. Including the interlude involving the front of her refrigerator. "We...talked it through."

"So what about now? I mean, why can't you two talk through whatever it is that's got you going in opposite directions? If you can handle that old green-eyed monster--"

"Now's different, Ron."

"How?"

Harry hesitated, then opted for the truth. He figured he was going to end up telling it sooner or later. He might as well spare himself the pain and strain of trying to avoid the inevitable. "She wants to get married."

"Hermione?"

Until that instant Harry had harbored a sneaking suspicion that his friend might be less ignorant about his breakup than he claimed. No more. The shock in Ron's voice couldn't have been feigned.

"Yes," he flatly confirmed.

"_Hermione Granger_--Ms. Single and Satisfied--wants to get _married?_"

"Yes," he repeated.

"To...you?"

Harry went rigid. He glared, not trusting himself to respond.

"Sorry," Ron apologized after several awkward seconds. He squirmed around his chair, his eyes narrowing assessingly. "I, uh, take it you, uh, don't? Want to get married to Hermione, that is."

"It wouldn't work," Harry stated, sidestepping the question.

"Why not?"

"It just wouldn't."

His friend regarded him in frowning silence for what seemed like a very long time. A split second before Harry opened his mouth to demand to know exactly what it was he thought he was looking at, Ron spoke.

"Hermione's not Cho, Harry," he said quietly.

Something inside Harry snapped. "Don't you think I realize that?" he countered harshly, slamming his suddenly fisted right hand down on his desk. "God Almighty! I could spend days--weeks!--listing the differences between them! But why should I? I don't want Hermione to be Cho. I've _never_ wanted her to be Cho! Cho is gone!"

"And you're looking to replace her?"

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed furiously, then shook his head as he realized what he'd said. "I mean,_ no!_" he contradicted, then shook his head again. "I mean--oh dammit to hell! I don't know what I mean anymore!"

He slumped in his chair, his chin against his chest, his eyes half closed. At least thirty seconds ticked by.

"Look, Harry--"

He straightened at the sound of his name, lifting his gaze to meet Ron's once again.

"No, _you _look," he said determinedly, overriding his friend's attempt to speak. "It's no secret that I came pretty close to going over the edge after Cho died. I...idealized...her. And our marriage. But lately--well, I've had to face up to the fact that things weren't as perfect as I thought. That there was aspects to Cho's character I'd never considered. Didn't even know about! Which isn't to say she wasn't a wonderful wife. Or that the years we had together weren't damned good. It's just that...that..."

"You've finally wised up to the reality that Cho played you like a fiddle from day one."

Harry stared, temporarily unable to speak. While he couldn't dispute the fundamental accuracy of his friend's summation, he shied instinctively from the bluntness of its phrasing.

"I'm not trying to smear her memory," Ron added quickly. "Cho was a terrific girl. And I know she made you happy. Even so...she _did_ have an uncanny knack for getting her own way."

It took Harry nearly a minute to come to terms with the implications of his friend's last statement. "Am I the only one who didn't realize that?" he asked once he had.

"Does it matter?"

Harry considered. "No," he replied slowly. "Not...really. But if everybody knew, why didn't anyone say anything? Why didn't _you?_"

"Because it was obvious you were happy with Cho and she was happy with you." The answer was quick and unequivocal. "If you knew how she operated and didn't mind, who was I to stir things up? And if you didn't know...well, why mess with emotional success?"

"Ignorance is bliss?"

"On occassion, yeah." Ron's mouth twisted into a cracked smile. "And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart. Which brings me back to my initial question. What the _hell _is going on between you and Hermione?"

"I've told you."

"She wants to get married and you don't."

"It wouldn't work."

"How can you be so sure?"

Harry hesitated, searching for a way to articulate his reservations. "You knew Lavender was the one for you from the very beginning, didn't you?" he asked after a few moments.

"Yeah." Ron nodded. "Pretty much."

"And Hermione's dad knew about her mum right away, too. I mean, he proposed to her on their first date--right?"

Another nod, accompanied by a slight furrowing of the forehead. "According to Hermione, yeah."

"Well, I fell for Cho as soon as I laid eyes on her. I mean, I didn't even know her name. But it was like...like..."

"Getting struck by a bolt of lightening." There was an odd edge to Ron's voice.

"Exactly."

"So?"

"So--" Harry spread is hands, palms up "--Hermione Granger was a part of my life for more than twenty years before I even registered she was a female!"

Ron's brows veed together in a sudden frown. "Wait a minute," he said. "Wait just a minute! Are you--jeez, Harry! Are you trying to tell me you decided you and Hermione didn't have what it takes for marriage because your feelings about her snuck up on you over time instead of smacking you between the eyeballs at the getgo?"

Harry opened his mouth to answer, then closed it without uttering a word as his mind replayed his friend's question. How could a line of reasoning that had seemed indisputable be summarized to sound so...so stupid? he wondered.

"You don't understand," he finally declared. Even to his own ears, the assertion sounded defensive.

"Then explain it to me." The response was as swift as a ricochet.

"Ron--"

"Let's forget the fact that you apparently were real slow on the uptake about Hermione's gender," his friend cut in. "You think she's a pretty special lady, don't you?"

"She's...one of a kind."

"Unique."

Harry's throat knotted. He swallowed, hard, several times. "Yes."

"Okay." Ron leaned forward, his expression intent. "Answer me this, Harry. Why do you expect the feelings she inspires in you to be anything less."

"Wh-what?"

"You said a while back you know Hermione's not another Cho. That you don't want her to be."

"I don't!" The words were from the heart. "I never did!"

"Fine. Then why are you stuck on the notion that unless the patterns of your relationship with her matches the pattern of the relationship you had with Cho, its doomed to failure?"

Harry stared at his friend, stunned. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. He very nearly couldn't think.

Then something deep within him seemed to shift. He felt it to the marrow of his bones--to the chromosomal strands of his DNA. It was as though he was being remade in the profoundest of ways at the most basic of levels.

"Oh, my God," he whispered. "Oh...my God."

"Love is a crapshoot, Harry," Ron went on evenly. "Even within lightening bolts, there are no guarantees you're going to get a happily ever after. Now, maybe you and Hermione don't have what it takes for two people to make it together, long term. Although based on what I saw at my parents dinner, I'd bet everything you do. Still, if you don't give it a try, you're never going to know. You didn't have any control over losing Cho. But when it comes to Hermione--well, it's your call."

There was a long pause. The difference between if and the ones that had came before was indescribable.

"Do you know when she's coming back from Canterbury?" Harry asked at last, his voice not entirely steady.

Ron smiled and winked. "No. But I'm acquainted with a relative who can definitely find out."


End file.
